


Sorrows Come Not As Single Spies

by StudioRat



Series: Branches and Fate [5]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Childhood Friends, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Gothic, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Grief, Hunting, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Intrusive Thoughts, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Meta, Mild Gore, Nonlinear Time, PTSD, Possibly Pre-Slash, Possibly Unrequited Love, Scenery Porn, There is a method in this madness, Tragedy, Underage Drinking, Violent Ideation, grimdark friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-28 08:19:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 61
Words: 88,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13267452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StudioRat/pseuds/StudioRat
Summary: What makes you... happy?I wonder.What makes you happy, does it make...others happy, too?How could you let a thing like that happen?! It's all your fault!-Setting:After and sideways of Majora. Link found a shard of a timeshift stone, and with that and the Ocarina and a lot of For Science!, has done Time Stuff.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hell is other people.  
> \- Joseph Garcin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > When sorrows come, they come not single spies  
> But in battalions.

The night wind stalked the sands, her frigid sting no less deadly for her unhurried pace. The fiercest wild things hid from her ravenous appetite in whatever shelter they could steal. Guardians of every sun-baked fortress in her realm exchanged the day’s airy linen raiments for tightly woven twisthorn wool arming suits and vicuña mantles, and still they huddled over braziers whenever they could. 

Yet even the wind held her breath when a bolt of many-colored light fell from the moonless heavens. Where it struck, the desolate sands reflected the shriek of steel on stone. Nesting rocs fled the crest of the arroyo in a riot of black-barred wings.

A fell warrior clothed in the searing white of noon strode across the shattered ground, a massive spiraling sword forged of deafening rainbow brilliance clutched in his bloody left hand. He wore masses of jeweled snakes at wrist and throat and waist, and more tiny green-eyed snakes writhed in his colorless hair. In his right fist he carried a short length of heavy rope, and his shining boots left sanguine prints as he marched up the arroyo toward the jagged mountain above.

The wind moved not at all.

Halfway up the treacherous sloping climb to the first fissure of thunderstruck stone, the warrior howled a wordless challenge in a voice like falling stones and rampaging waters and the deadly black winds of summer.

The sands gave back his cry, but nothing else answered. He stood before the mountain, glowing silver-white eyes expressionless, his pale face marked with cobalt and carmine and drying blood.

Night pulled a thin veil of clouds over the winking stars and wandering fire, hiding their fragile secrets from the furious warrior. He resumed his advance, indifferent to the broken terrain. Every dozen strides he would call out again, demanding the mountain answer him. Again the desert allowed a hollow echo, but nothing more. 

A loose boulder tumbled from its perch. He raised his dread sword, shattering the rock with a single dispassionate blow.

The mountain laughed.

“ **I will end you** ,” cried the warrior.

“Indeed,” rumbled the voice in the mountain. “You may  _ try _ .”

“ **Nothing defies this blade and lives** ,” growled the warrior. “ **Stop cowering behind your rock and face me, or I shall bring it down upon your head!** ”

“And what of those who bow? What sublime mercy do you afford  _ them _ ?” The voice in the mountain seemed to purr its challenge, gray mist feathering out from every crack in the stone.

The warrior roared, charging at the jagged mountain.

The mountain laughed. “Smash away - I was thinking about redecorating in any case. Tea?”

The warrior paused among the shards of another decimated boulder, chest heaving though his pale face betrayed no emotion whatsoever.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” rumbled the voice. “You will have to do without sugar. Humans seem to be getting lazy about their offerings lately. I shall have to think about exerting myself sometime this year, I suppose.”

“ **You** **_will_ ** **learn to fear me,** ” shouted the warrior, edging closer to the mountain. “ **_Everyone_ ** **fears me in the end and the end and the end.** ”

“Alas, I think not,” said the mist-wreathed  mountain without remorse. Tiny electric sparks shimmered in the fissure, and the jagged thunderstruck stone peeled back, revealing a small slice of the cavernous shrine within. “Your mask may fool lesser creatures, but I know your true face. No matter what strength you bring to bear, I will remain.”

The shining warrior growled, stalking towards the hidden shrine. “ **Every horrible thing that has become is** **_your fault_ ** **.** ” 

“Whatever,” said the voice from the shrine inside the black mist inside the shrine inside the mountain. A vast taloned hand stretched out from the mist, beckoning the warrior closer. “Your emotions do  _ fascinate _ me. The old stick did you a great disservice, you know, holding you in isolation all those years.”

The warrior canted his sword to guard, stepping warily inside the flint-studded shrine. “ **What do** **_you_ ** **know about anything, heartless demon?** **_None_ ** **of this disaster would have ever become in the first time if you hadn’t seduced the King-** ”

“Pffah. Even if I  _ were _ the catalyst, I’ll happily tangle up with her every time you play your little songs.  _ Unf _ ,” said the demon, waving back some of his sparking mist as a fine lady might draw aside her curtains. “ _ Completely _ worth it.”

Framed by his magic and his shimmering wings draped so lazily about, his colossal body filled the better half of the little shrine where he made his lair. The warrior’s light showed the demon’s skin to be the color of old olive leaves, his wild hair the blinding yellow-green of highland lightning. Although his torso resembled that of a man, his head was a strange melding of man and desert hound. Below the waist his flesh divided into eight snakelike limbs with delicate scales in every color of darkness, coiled in elegant knots in his nest of cushions and stormcloud. 

“ **Disgusting, wicked** **_thing_ ** **,** ” said the warrior, recoiling. “ **How can you doom the whole world to flame and chaos for a-** ”

“A most  _ excellent _ affair? Easily,” said the demon, leaning back on his bright cushions, a steaming amphorae cradled in his massive hands. With one dexterous scaled limb he poured boiling water from a golden pot over a heap of red leaves in a golden basket balanced over a bright oasis-glazed teapot. “Except for the troubling little difficulty that it has nothing whatever to do with  _ me _ . You mortals feel things so  _ passionately _ , so  _ intently _ , and she is a notably magnificent example. Almost as delicious as you, little hero.”

The warrior-hero drew back with a cry of disgust. “ **I won't let it happen again - I won't! This is all your fault - but I will unmake your evil. Rise, and fight me-!** ”

“Mmmno,” purred the demon, yellow-green eyes thinning to amused crescents above his gently curving muzzle. “In any other era I would be surprised the sage of time does not possess a more nuanced understanding of  _ consequence _ , but your foolish tree-spirit never has understood mortals. Burying you well away from your world with only lesser forest children for company - pfah. Trickster sprites every one of them, with not the slightest idea what a human child  _ is _ let alone what he might  _ need _ . It is well for both of you that the good people of the farm-”

“ **But - it is all unraveled in this time. I know it is. How do you even know about them?** ” The warrior-hero-child lowered his fell sword. 

“As I said - mortals entertain me. And I have a particular interest in the fates of my own children,” said the demon. “We spirits do  _ have _ hearts - they are merely different from your fragile, quicksilver ones. Your tea is ready.”

“ **I don’t want** **_tea_ ** ,” cried the warrior, holding forth the loop of red plaited rope. “ **I want to fix** **_this_ ** **. Once he is seeded he brings disaster to everyone, even when he is not born. So I will not let you-!** ”

“You can either restore, or destroy. Not both,” said the demon with a click of his tongue. “I should think even you could learn that.”

The warrior lowered the rope to his side. “ **You said children.** ”

“So I did,” agreed the demon cordially, sipping his amphorae of tea. “I  _ like _ mortals. Especially strong, clever,  _ brave _ ones. Great good fun. And when they inevitably break, there’s always another one.”

The warrior roared in fury and revulsion. 

The demon laughed. “Oh but you are  _ precious _ . You could always stay with  _ me _ this time around. I could teach you many  _ wondrous _ things, and I can promise you won’t mind paying a sweet little price on occasion once you’ve gotten a taste of what  _ I _ can do.”

“ **Never** ,” said the warrior, raising his spiral blade.

“Suit yourself,” said the demon with a shrug. “This much I’ll give you for free, because it amuses me to do it. Your dear little mortal princess does carry the potential to look upon the branching fates as my kind does - but only briefly, and only in the way of dreams. She is no more infallible than you.”

“ **Then - if you can see all the tomorrows,** ” said the warrior slowly, looking at the rope in his right fist. “ **Then I will spare you on one condition, demon. Tell me which is the right one. Tell me which branch will make it right in the end and the end and the end.** ”

“That is neither my province nor yours,” chided the demon. “The way you travel most wears the road most deeply, that is all.”

“ **But - the storm,”** said the warrior, cracks surfacing in his terrible voice. “ **So many lost.** **_Seven years_ ** **of disaster.** ”

“Seven years when the power protecting your kind from the ravages of wild spirits and the scars of the gods’ wars was broken and scattered,” returned the demon. “ _ You _ were stolen from the world entirely to hurry you into a more powerful body, and Hylia’s descendent locked her wisdom away in a cage of fear and hate and left her country to live or die as it would without her. Power without balance was enough to keep Hyrule from shivering to pieces completely, but your triforce has been used too often and too carelessly for human life to continue long without it. The very power which liberated your fragile lives from divine wars is now woven into the very foundations of your world, tangled irrevocably with the blood and greed of your ancestors. You will never repair it all, little hero.”

“ **Watch me,** ” said the warrior.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T-14

A young roc muttered to his sleeping mate, keeping one red eye on the little groundling below. It had emerged from the shadows below his nest without any warning at all, cawing rudely. It skreeked and clicked and growled to itself, rabid and stumbling. It didn’t look toward the rocs’ nest, or raise shining pain-sticks into the air, but groundlings were never to be trusted.

The wind wasn’t good - thin with twilight, and going the wrong way to make a dive easy. This whole winter had been one of bad winds and crackling green storms.

But this one wayward groundling wandering abroad at twilight was small.

And injured.

Winter was a time of poor hunting.

The roc chirred to his mate in an undertone, nudging her awake. She complained, pecking at his head until he persuaded her to look down.

Her beak parted in anticipation.

The roc dropped from his branch, wings folded, feeling the wind for the right moment to snap his wings and bank toward his prey. Too soon, and it might hear him in time to ready pain-sticks or hide under one of the empty groundling structures at the edge of the next box canyon.

Too late, and his least favorite clutchmate nesting on that side might catch it first.

The wind shifted at the most perfect moment. He wanted to crow over the beauty of his perfect swoop and first debilitating strike. The groundling fell under his fisted talons with a rasping cry. The roc banked sharply, descending with his talons open for the kill.

He neither saw nor felt the lightning which ended him.


	3. Chapter 3

Rajo stumbled on the last of the Dragon Stairs, but at least the climb was over. They ached from toe to crown, inside and out. The night wind picked up her pace, howling in warning and triumph as she so often did this winter. Rajo hauled themselves back to their tired feet again, leaning shamefully against the warm stone wall for balance.

Their left leg still didn’t want to work quite right, and their shoe pinched terribly. Probably from swelling - but a dose of the leftover stolen red potion should fix that. It hadn’t fixed anything important, but at least it would be good for _something_.

The amber crystals in their secret cave woke in greeting, flickering and pulsing as their light increased. A wayward spider scuttled away into a crack between carvings on the gray-green walls, but aside from its half-finished web, everything remained exactly as they’d left it a week before. The second batch of useless pickled stinkhorn manashroom still sat in neat rows beside their makeshift table of broken target board and stolen bricks.

Well. Maybe not _useless_ , but still an abysmal failure. _Nothing_ lifted the cursed red cough.

Rajo drank off the bitter healing potion at once, clenching their jaw as their heart raced and heat bloomed under their bruised ribs. That was good. Red potion stirred heat when it was working. It would have been hard to run the spirit roads into the sands if they were still laboring to breathe.

That thought brought them dangerous memories of Angnu, who would never run the spirit roads. The red cough fell over everyone in the fortress but Rajo, stealing hundreds of ilmaha and dozens each of warriors and weavers and smiths and servants. Even the Rova blamed them for the plague, adding nine more lashes to the healers’ sentence.

They should know better. Of all the avadha of the desert, the _Rova_ should have known they were telling the truth. Or rather - they should have _cared_ that it wasn’t true. They _had_ to _know_. They’d punished Rajo all season for a constant failures in their lessons. Rajo hadn’t been able to cast even the smallest cantrip inside the walls in weeks, and no conjuration, enchantment, nor ward all winter without touching the demon gem.

And why would they ever hurt Angnu? Angnu was good at being who they were expected to be. They had always been kind, and honest, and kept their promises.

Except their last one.

_No - stay. I’m still listening, I promise. It’s just my eyes are tired from coughing so much. Tell me what happened next. Did Tevi solve the equation first, or did Mae?_

Rajo howled their frustration at the cave, refusing to even look upon the taunting, distant beauty of the wandering fire dancing its mysterious patterns above the great glass eye in the ceiling.

“ **Why this** **_one_ ** ,” answered a voice like the black wind. “ **Why do you care about this** **_one_ ** **when there are a hundred thousand million other people who will suffer?** ”

Rajo drew their shortblade, turning wildly, looking for the voice. A blue sort of glitter seemed to fill the narrow fissure leading out to the Dragon Stair, but otherwise, they were alone.

“Why should I care more about _strangers_ than Angnu?” Rajo asked the blue light.

“ **Ah** ,” said the terrible voice from the light. “ **So that is the seat of your anger after all. The loss of a friend.** ”

“I don’t have _friends_ ,” said Rajo, letting their anger call sparks to dance around them and sizzle along their little blade, eager to be given a target. “If you were any kind of spirit worth anything, you would know that - _and_ you would know better than to cross the Rovas’ apprentice.”

“ **I know more than you could ever imagine,** ” said the voice in the blue light as it stretched and twisted and made Rajo sick. “ **Except the answer to this riddle, which only the child of prophecy can answer. Why does the King of Evil weep?** ”

“That’s a stupid riddle,” said Rajo between dry heaves. One thin advantage to going hungry in atonement for stealing from the storehouse. Not that the candied fruit and King’s Honey had done Angnu any good anyway. The wandering fire started to skitter away again, and they couldn’t find the focus to draw it back under control yet. “Not much of a king if he’s weak enough to get caught crying.”

“ **Even so, it is a rock which disturbs the river of Time,** ” said the terrible noon-bright spirit from the blue light. “ **You break the rules. You do bad things. Terrible things. Yet you weep for this one insignificant soul returned to the gods young. You aid a stranger. You spare an enemy. And still you embrace the darkness.** **_Why_ ** **?** ”

“Maybe I _like_ the darkness,” said Rajo, wiping the bitterness of bile from their lips. At least it was only a little, and the red potion had already absorbed into their flesh. “The shadows like _me_ just fine. And I have _magic_ , and _don't_ think you can scare me just because your stupid blue spell made me throw up. I _will have_ the secrets of the stars and the reins of the wind and the power of a _god_ , just you watch.”

“ **Already you are willing to destroy the world in a fit of rage** ,” said the bright warrior spirit, looming in the middle of the square cave. His armor shone painfully, and the spiral ricasso of the rainbow sword peeking over his shoulder screamed like discordant bells. A strange blue rune marked his perfect brow, and red war paint defined the arch of his smooth cheeks. The only thing about him that wasn’t made of light and noise was the strange little coil of red plaited rope hanging from his silver belt. “ **But** **I know someone who will be your friend, even so**.”

Rajo frowned, letting their other hand drop away from the hilt of their little knife. It wouldn’t do much good against a normal grownup with a sword. What use could it be against a magical one? “I've never heard of a spirit like you.”

“ **There** **_is_ ** **no other spirit like me,** ” said the warrior spirit, his expressionless eyes glowing with a steady white light.

“Who _are_ you? _What_ are you? Where did you come from? How do you know me?” Rajo demanded.

“ **I was a hero once, in a long ago tomorrow,** ” said the warrior, lowering his voice so the cave only shivered a little bit. “ **I have known your spirit through a hundred hundred lives. I dance the sun, and I dance the moon, and I am always with you, until it is right in the end and the end and the end.”**   
  
“You have a strange way of speaking,” said Rajo, crossing their arms on their chest. However powerful a spirit he was, they would not allow him to think he held any power over _them_. They knew the old laws, and they had found riddles in the ancient texts which promised to lead to the resting places of great powers sealed against immortal hands. “You take a Hylian shape, but speak the words of the People with a strange accent. Why? And what is your sword made of that makes it so loud?”

“ **It** **is forged from the tears and the dreams of a thousand thousand lives who balance on its edge** ,” said the warrior, drawing the terrible blade with the screech of a hungry gibdo. He held it in guard, and wove it slowly through the air in the first pattern of the sword-courts, making the strange rainbow metal ring.

“But the edge isn't even straight,” said Rajo. “How can anything balance on it?

“ **That riddle, child of prophecy, is yet another reason why I have come for you,** ” said the warrior, returning his awful blade to its place upon his back.

“Well you're too late. I’m busy,” said Rajo, turning their back and pulling the battered chest out from its hiding place under a pile of carefully balanced stolen trash. Whatever the crazy spirit wanted didn’t matter. They needed to have everything ready before dawn.

“ **Those provisions will carry you no farther than the third flag in the sand sea,** ” said the warrior. “ **Down that road lies a terrible fate - choose it freely, and I cannot protect you.** ”   
  
“I don't need _help_ from you or anyone,” snapped Rajo over their shoulder, adding another packet of warrior’s rations to their satchel. “I can find my Name on my own.”

“ **The only Name that waits for you there is the one your mothers chose for you,** ” said the warrior, planting himself in front of the fissure that led back to the Dragon Stairs. “ **Angnu’s death is but** **_one drop_ ** **in the ocean of tears which flow from the hands of** **_Ganondorf_ ** **. The miasma of death over the fortress grows with every wicked, selfish, hateful act you let them drive you towards. You've been marked for a terrible fate - but** **_I_ ** **can change that.** ”

“You're lying,” said Rajo, refusing to acknowledge the ice crawling into their empty stomach.

“ **Take my hand and know the truth for yourself,** ” said the warrior, extending his left hand. His shining white gloves with sparkling steel plates sewn onto them proved on closer inspection to be terribly bloodstained under all that light. “ **That Name carved into your heart marks you as a vessel for the evil they serve. From the day you were born they have shaped you towards that design.** ”

“Then maybe you should have come sooner,” said Rajo, settling the satchel across their body. They tried not to look at the warrior’s outstretched hand, but studied his strange bright armor instead, made of shining plates marked with hidden runes.

 **“I tried,** ” said the warrior, and all the sorrow of the defeated filled his terrible voice. “ **But I can only move the heavens. Choose to walk in the light, and I will change your stars. Embrace hatred instead, and the power you covet will destroy you.** ”

“No it won’t,” said Rajo, balling their hands into fists. “I already _have_ more power than any other ilmaha ever has, and the spirit trials are my birthright. I will conquer them earlier than anyone and become the greatest Rova ever known - and then I will ride the very wind into Hyrule and steal away their magic princess for myself and then everyone will bow to _me_.”

“ **And in this dream, you believe no one will ever hurt you again, because _you_ will be the strongest,** ” said the warrior spirit, sinking down to one knee, his arms open. “ **I know a place where you don’t have to be a monster to be safe. Where you can live in the Light forever, away from the small-minded hatred of cowards and the blasphemy of the ignorant.** ”

“Why should I believe you?” Rajo demanded.

“ **Come with me** ,” said the kneeling warrior spirit. “ **See for yourself how the temple has been desecrated, the Trials corrupted.** ”

“And then-?” Rajo asked.

“ **And then I will take you to meet a new friend** ,” said the warrior spirit with a terrifying smile.


	4. Chapter 4

Frigid gray-cloaked dawn hounded them all the way to the haunted crags of Ikana. The cries of the forgotten and the damned gnawed on their long shadows, and the shrieking fury of the night wind devoured their footprints as if the marks of their passing could ever make up for prey denied her.

The shining warrior strode along the edge of the ancient canyon, his bright pupilless eyes turning neither left nor right as he carried his ancient enemy away to lands foreign to them both. The severed braid dragged heavy from his belt, and the discordant hum of the rainbow sword on his back made wild creatures cower and flee before them.

Neither spoke until the sun rose above the temple spires at their backs - but no one could have looked on the red-haired child riding the shoulder of a demigod and failed to mark the sucking riptide of terrible purpose which bound them together.

“ **There - the city at the end of the world,** ” said the warrior in a voice like the rending earth, gesturing toward the shadowed western lowland below. “ **Here where four provinces meet under the great waterclock, where the tomorrow-moon dances, where every language that was ever heard is still spoken in the marketplace, it is at this crossroad you will find your new friend.** ”

“Well it looks stupid. Where are the watchtowers? Where are the guard supposed to even patrol? Anybody could scale those stubby little walls and no one would know until it was over,” said the child, hunching his shoulders under the sand-and-mud-colored mantle.

“ **The walls are stronger than you think, and the gates more stout.** ” The warrior shook his head. “ **The Terminan Republic remains neutral in the Wars, and the guardian spirits of these lands are strong. The fields can be dangerous but-** ”

The child made a rude noise. “ _Everywhere_ is dangerous, according to you.”

“ **I say it because it is true, child of prophecy. Evil calls to evil,** ” said the warrior, his shining eyes fixed on the painted walls of the city below. “ **But there is a secret passage under this city, where the river of time flows through the blades of the great clock. The one who will be your friend holds the key to the river - follow it together to the place where the Orb of Light rests upon the bones of the Leviathan.** ”

“If the Orb is so strong, why didn’t you just-” began the child.

“ **Neither god nor demon nor spirit may wield its power,** ” said the warrior, bowing his head. “ **You alone can make the choice to live in the Light - or not.** ”

“Oh,” said the child.


	5. Chapter 5

On the first night he discovered he could walk the twilight roads, Ganondorf learned what it was to be truly cold. In a desert winter, the night wind sunk her talons deeper than even Kotake’s icy rebukes. He made a habit of changing to sturdy, dense woolens every night thereafter, and stole extra blankets and mantles to hide in his favorite lairs. Just in case.

The underground canal linking the observatory to the Clocktown water supply taught him how little he understood of how bitter cold can be. By the time he stumbled into the thin winter sun once more, he was soaked from toe to crown, his jaw ached from clenching his teeth so hard against the shivering, and his chest hurt from the inside out.

Then the snow began.

Ganondorf stood in the plaza, hurling every obscenity he knew at the sky. He reached for his magic, despite the fierce spirit’s warning. Nothing answered him, and the snow continued to fall. A few townspeople snickered in his general direction, but otherwise they ignored him.

Even the _guards_ ignored him.

No warrior of the People would have let an ilmaha his age throw a fit in public unless they were bleeding all over. But he wasn’t ilmaha anymore. He’d seen the demonkin and the gibdo and the tormented patchwork guardians and mindless puppets the Rova made, and he could never unsee any of it. He could never go home now. Ganondorf ran out of insults to hurl at the gods, and sat down on the curb to rest and feel sorry for himself.

A soft-spoken woman in a long blue skirt stopped to say something incomprehensible to him, and made him take a yellow rupee. She pointed to one of the shops lining the plaza, smiled at him, and was gone.

Ganondorf thought about throwing the rupee away - but what if the person with the key to the clock tower wanted money for it? The fierce spirit hadn’t said much about how to find this stranger, or even what they might be like. Clocktown wasn’t exactly a small settlement.

A fat man in green dropped a fistful of green rupee in his lap, and told him in a wretched accent to go eat something.

Ganondorf snarled at his back, furious that these nobody foreigners thought he needed their charity. Him! The Rova’s greatest apprentice. Son of the best thieves in the world. Cursed to become the most wicked of kings, unless he managed - somehow! - to beg aid from a foreign stranger and find the Orb of Light and change his stars.

Maybe he could just _buy_ the stranger’s help. Then he wouldn’t have to try and be friends with them. But what price might they put on a magic key? He didn’t have much money in his satchel - what use rupee in the sand sea? He’d packed a little in his secret stash mostly on the chance of needing to bargain with a clever poe, and to hide it from the Rova.

The vicuña mantle turned stiff and itchy with ice the longer he sat in the open, and loose strands of hair started to freeze to the back of his neck. Ganondorf wanted nothing more than to strip off his gross clothes and crawl into the shadows forever.

But then his mothers would win.

So he hauled himself back to his feet, and stumbled across the plaza to the shop the woman had pointed out. The owner spoke tolerable Hylian, and happily sold him a fat mug of hot apple cider for the scandalous price of five pathetic rupee. He gave away directions to the Stockpot Inn for free.

Ganondorf wandered fruitlessly for an hour, but a pink-faced child in a sweater many sizes too large offered to show him the way for two rupee and five naughty words. The child argued with the innkeeper for him when she said a room cost twenty rupee, and even insisted she throw in a bowl of soup and let him sit in the kitchen until his clothes dried out.

He in turn promised to teach the child and all their friends more bad words in the morning, if they would show him the city.

He gave the innkeeper the yellow rupee and the deadname Rajolaan. Just in case.


	6. Chapter 6

Link paced under the leafless trees in the north-quarter park until he trod the snow into mud. He altered his heading, trampling fresh powder into slush, into mud, and still Rajo did not appear.

Even with the power of a dead god filling his skin, he’d wanted a drink. Or ten.

Without the magic of _that mask_ buzzing through bone and sinew, without the comforting weight of _that sword_ on his back, without the immediacy of mundane work to fill his hands, his mind, his endless hours, he couldn’t hold back the crushing weight of his many failures.

Drink would help.

A little.

But the only places to _get_ strong drink in clocktown wouldn’t open for hours yet. The park held no one else but the harmless mad son of the map-maker. He had the ocarina in his pocket. A moment - a blink - he could dance through the river and into the body of a hero. Another little dance with the sun and the bars would sell him anything he wanted.

But what if Rajo came while he was away, dancing?

He stopped in the middle of his looping mud-tracks, staring hard at each gate in turn. None of them brought Rajo.

Link combed his fingers through his short hair, glaring at the mostly-empty park, and the wretched sword-flower pattern he’d stained it with. However far he travelled, his shadow always followed him. 


	7. Chapter 7

Rumor spread swiftly among the children of Clocktown. By the second full afternoon, Ganondorf collected more rupee than his satchel would even hold at once, and established profitable little contracts with a half dozen human shop owners to run small errands for them.

He had not acquired the slightest hint of anyone who might hold the key he sought.

Then again, the fierce spirit only said the stranger would be at the crossroad under the shadow of the clock tower. He hadn’t said anything about _when_ the stranger might appear. If in fact spirits understood mortal time at all.

So he exchanged small rupee for larger, and sold his desert clothing to the rag-and-bone man in exchange for a cloak and hood and tall boots made of white wolfos skins. He bought pale gray trousers made in the local fashion, and a set of high-collared linen shirts and heavy socks knit with blue stripes.

Ganondorf tried not to care when the townspeople thought him avadha. They didn’t know any better, and his command of the common Terminan language wasn’t yet good enough to explain their ignorance to them, even if he wanted to. Which he didn’t.

At least the local humans didn’t care where he came from. Every Zora and Hylian traveler who saw his face uncovered snarled and cursed his sisters with the foulest language he’d ever heard, and he’d overlistened Nabooru drink majir with the other avadha Saiev a hundred times at least. And if a Zora caught him in the street, without any town guard around? Ganondorf counted himself lucky if they only threw rocks.

 _Evil calls to evil_ , he reminded himself, and took greater care to bind his fraying braids more tightly and pull his hood forward whenever he went out.

He gambled forty rupee at the shooting gallery on the fourth day and exchanged his winnings for bleached doeskin gloves and a long white sheepskin vest. Both had the same blood-red and night-blue flowers stitched around the edges and neat columns of polished white bone buttons. The tailor made fun of his snowkin fashion sense, but she took his rupee happily enough. She even sent word through the children’s rumor mill on the sixth day when her brother returned from trade circuit with a whole basket of fine lace scarves and shawls knit in silk and downy cashmere.

Ganondorf gave the tailor fifty rupee to hold aside a kitten-soft scarf with candle-flame edging and the absolute best of the ornate shawls for him.

He washed dishes for the inn and the tavern next door for a week. His back ached from bending over the sinks, and he had fresh bruises from falling off the overturned box he had to stand on to reach. He drained most of his account at the clock tower bank to pay the tailor. The rest went for a couple of old books and a bottle of spice-infused oil to soothe his chapped and blistered hands - but he gambled his last twenty rupee at the shooting gallery and won just enough to keep his room at the inn another hand of days.

And still, the other children brought him no rumors of any key-holder, or any restless spirit. As far as they understood, he was the only strange thing to happen in Clocktown since forever.

 _They aren’t wrong_ , he told himself as he climbed toward the old fairy shrine a few days before solstice. _It’s better they never guess just how strange their world could become if the gods decide to notice where the king of demons has stolen away._

Ganondorf sat in a shadowed corner of the frozen shrine for hours, waiting for something, anything to happen. Or at least something more interesting than a gaggle of fashionable Terminan avadha leaving offerings of flowers and fruit and folded paper frippery. If any of that was supposed to please the local spirit, he saw no sign of it.

He left a jar of honey-glazed spiced apples anyway. Just in case.

On the way back across the city, he crossed paths with some of the older boys wearing homemade fox masks. They tripped him when no one was looking, and then pretended to help him up from his ‘clumsy accident’. They stole his shortblade and tried to steal his satchel, but one of the town guard came around the corner and they went back to pretending to be friends.

The innkeeper’s daughter gave him a white and red fox mask of his own for solstice. She was nice. Like Angnu. So Ganondorf pretended to be happy about her gift, and gave her the last packet of honeycakes from home.

 


	8. Chapter 8

The snow fell heavy and wet on solstice eve, draping the city in a perfect white blanket. Morning came with languid gray mist that refused to lift before noon. Street vendors brought out their most festive wares, and the people of Clocktown left their homes to indulge themselves in everything spiced, roasted, fermented, or otherwise exotic.

Link circled the city for the thousandth time, asking each and every guard if _today_ , finally today, _one_ of them might have seen a red-haired Gerudo child. Or anything else strange. Monsters. Ghosts. Any ominous sign at all.

Nothing.

He couldn’t even be certain Rajo lived. Not here. Beyond the borders of Hyrule, the influence of the Golden Gods diminished immensely. In Termina, the health of the local spirits mattered more than the distant magic of the Triforce - and why would any of _them_ care if the axis mundi slid a little out of balance? It could be decades - maybe centuries - before most people living at the edges of civilization would be affected by the loss of Power.

The spirits would know sooner - and demonkind almost at once - but he couldn’t yet bring himself to leave the city to ask.

The fairy of Clocktown couldn’t help him. Not that she didn’t try - it was only she heard so much gossip, and saw so _many_ people, she could barely mark any one individual mortal apart from the rest. Worse, the tomorrows of the falling moon shattered her so badly she’d lost much of her power - and her grasp of mortal time.

Link crossed the river of time just long enough to retrieve a mask. Not _that_ mask. Not yet. Just the relatively minor horribleness of a magic that revealed the ugly truths other people locked behind their teeth.

He found part of Rajo’s enveloping mantle on the shoulders of a maid. He traced the rest to a tiny shop at the edge of town, remade into three more little shawls.

The seamstress confessed to cheating the rag-and-bone man out of a fair price for the exotic cloth.

Link craved the comfort of a stiff drink even more desperately after hearing the confessions of the rag-and-bone man.

Six thieves later, a guard told the mask he’d confiscated a curved knife from a brown-haired boy wearing a fox mask.

Link stood in the snow in a sea of festival foxes and wept.


	9. Chapter 9

Solstice festivities filled every corner of the city with light and noise and people. Every kind of folk who ever traveled to the ends of the world poured into Clocktown to celebrate the longest night of the year. They sang and danced indoors and out, wearing painted paper masks and spending terrifying amounts of money.

Ganondorf leaned against the terrace railing, watching the surge of the crowd below as the inkeeper’s mother blathered at him. Again.

“It’s an absolute _scandal_ ,” she repeated, clicking her tongue and shrugging her cableknit shawl higher. “Any nine year old child traveling alone is bad enough, but a poor little pirate-born girl like you? Without even a sister for company? Working at that disreputable tavern for _money_ instead of attending a proper school and celebrating the winter festival with your family? It shouldn’t be allowed.”

Ganondorf rolled his eyes. “I told you, I’m _fine_. I don’t care about the stupid parties anyway. They’re loud and vulgar and messy and I hate them.”

“And that tavern isn’t? Come now, you mustn’t be so stubborn. My daughter may not be - she doesn’t have a warm manner, like my dear granddaughter. But she has a good heart,” said the old woman.

“So good she would charge a _child_ double,” returned Ganondorf. “I only keep staying here because it’s close to the damn clock.”

“Watch your language missy, or I will wash out that filthy tongue myself. What would your mother think of your bad attitude? I am _trying_ to help you,” said the old woman, clicking her tongue in censure.

“I don't need help,” grumbled Ganondorf. “And I don’t need _school_ or _family_ or _parties_ or _sweets_ or any other _stupid_ thing. As soon as I find that _damn_ key-”

“Ah-HA! I knew you were after something when you started sneaking out after curfew,” crowed the old woman, shaking her finger at him. “Did that riff-raff from the western quarter get you tangled up in one of their pranks? They’re getting worse every year - and the guard will catch them at it soon enough and then they’ll wish _they’d_ listened to old ladies. Just because you’re pirate-born doesn’t mean you have to follow those wicked ways. You live in a _civilized_ country now.”

“Whatever,” said Ganondorf, pulling his gloves back on. “I’ve got stuff to do.”

“It better not be stealing somebody’s keys for those no-good vagrants,” said the old woman with a disdainful sniff.

Ganondorf shrugged and settled his white fox mask into place. “Everything has a price.”

The old woman sighed. “It’s not right, you gallivanting about town all by yourself without anyone looking after your safety, your future-”

“I _don’t_ need looking after,” growled Ganondorf, securing his hood with a brass hat pin. “Mind your own threads and I’ll do the worrying about mine.”

He ignored her sputtering objections and vaulted the railing to catch the laundry line strung between buildings and leap onto the roof of the shop next door. He scrambled up the slope on all fours, crunching through the rime to sink his fingers into the heavy thatch. When he reached the peak, he ran down the roofbeam and scaled the chimney to collect the chimneysweep’s abandoned broom. He used the sturdy ash handle to vault towards the rough quadratum stone of the next building where he could climb to one of the balconies the townspeople strung festival banners from.

All of which would have been ten times faster and a hundred times easier if he just took the shadowroad from the first. But then the innkeeper’s mother would know him for a sorcerer, and what would she do then? Would she petition the mayor to drive him out of town? Or to lock him up? How would he ever reach the Orb of Light if that happened?

“Anyway, if I summon shadows _now_ ,” Ganondorf hissed to himself, straining to reach a fresh handhold. “The demons will _know_.”

The infernal noise of revelry and tuneless song followed him through the entire punishing climb. In summer, it would have been easier. Terminan architects favored textural follies and trimming out each level of a building to show off their cleverness. But he dared not trust his weight to the larger protrusions - they all caught drifts of snow, and where snow could stick, so could ice.

He waited on the balcony a long time, judging the distance and the rope and the crowd. When each breath no longer hurt, he couldn’t justify further lingering. So he wound the banner ropes around his fists and leapt.

No one at the festival was looking up, so his first perfect execution of aerial master’s hip-twist challenge went entirely unnoticed. He sprawled on the far balcony, heart racing, rope and bunting tangled around every limb. One length might be enough to reach the top of the city walls, but every moment wasted in gathering up and belaying out again to drop down the other side was another opportunity for the guard to catch him doing it.

“Three lengths would be safer,” he mumbled to no one in particular. “At least the second bit is just a straight run down the eave.”

In the end though, the bunting along the eaves and gutters proved too old and weak to serve him, and so his second theft of the night required a repeat of the first aerial trick. It did not go quite so well, and he made the last six yards by way of a graceless pinch climb. Bruised and frustrated, he rearranged the ropes into a more comfortable cross harness and decided to scout the rooftops for an easier third coil.

He never found one - he slipped on a bit of black ice and then? The ridge tile he grasped to recover his balance snapped off at the base, sending him tumbling down the wrong side of the slope. He just barely caught the gutter in time to save himself a four-storey drop, at the expense of his gloves and possibly his left shoulder. Muscle and tendon popped with excruciating resonance, but somehow he managed to haul himself back up onto the edge of the roof without giving in to the temptation to call his magic.

It was as he lay half in the lead gutter and half on the slate roof, trying not to think about what almost happened, that Ganondorf noticed the glitter of blue magic below. A faint thing - more of a dim reflection than an actual glow. Yet - it shone the exact same color as the magic that brought the warrior-spirit to his secret cave above the dragon stairs.

“Balls,” he swore under his breath, and gathered his will to rise.

Sticky, greasy shadows filled the alley below. Ganondorf crept carefully along the edge of the roof, grimacing at the stink of kitchens infrequently cleaned and trash lumped into the narrow nowhere-space between buildings to be forgotten. Somewhere in all that mess, the terrible blue magic coiled, waiting for him to find it.

Ganondorf looped rope around the downspout and anchored himself against it with his good arm, attention divided between the revolting blue magic and the pull of the ground beneath him. The wind picked up as he descended, and shards of moonlight snuck through the clouds. He couldn’t quite reach any friendly ledge to get out of the wretched, revealing light, so he flipped a few coils over his shoulder and pushed off into a stone drop.

Someone in the alley below groaned and cursed - something about foxes - and shortly after came the noise of some wretched box or firkin meeting its destruction. The shimmer of the blue magic vanished - but Ganondorf felt its resonance even as he forced himself to a sudden stop just above the frozen cistern.

Another curse - this one blasphemous - and then nothing but the distant buzz of revelry. He eased down onto the ice, searching the shadows in the depths of the alley. The voice _might_ have come from inside one of the buildings - muffled by kitchen shutters or carried into the alley by iron stove pipes. It _might_ have nothing to do with the traces of the weird blue magic.

Ganondorf crept around splintered boxes, feeling like every step drew him across swaying cable instead of solid ground. He followed that discomfort between piles of broken barrels and empty crates through the deepest, coldest shadows, around a tight corner where the alley ended abruptly at a rotten, moss-coated door.

Wary of a trap, he scaled the wall instead. Beyond lay only an overgrown wreck of a tiny charred and icebound garden belonging to a charred and crumbling little house. Stumbling tracks through the dappled snow led his eye to the foot of a lightning-struck oak. At its foot, a ragged satchel spilled its guts across the snow. Empty bottles, a shriveled apple, a handful of smooth stones and bright rupee, worn books with frayed pages hanging out.

But.

The slender Hylian boy kneeling in the middle of so much trash wore a tunic of Sun’s Heart purple, and the mask pushed up into his wheat-gold hair bore the stamp of  powerful Sheikah magic.

Ganondorf again cursed the Terminan thugs who managed to steal his shortblade, and jumped down from the wall.

The Hylian boy cried out, and toppled sideways when he tried to rise. His pale face was blotchy pink, his cold blue eyes wild and unfocused. Yet he tried to draw his sword even so. A common Hylian style of sword: leaf-bladed, double-edged, with a rounded crossguard and plain acorn pommel. A simple slashing weapon too large for a boy so frail, but which demanded very little skill to be of service to its bearer.

“Hey,” said Ganondorf, stomping through the snow and trying to look tall. Sharp, confusing fumes seeped under his mask as he drew closer to the boy - but he couldn’t possibly be smelling King’s Tears. Not here. Surely. “You stupid or what? I _could_ call the guard on you, trespasser.”

“What? No - _you’re_ the one who - who shouldn’t be here,” yelled the boy, fumbling with his sword and struggling to his feet again. “Thieving meddling fox - _give it back!”_


	10. Chapter 10

The white fox stalked closer, undaunted by his blade. It tilted its blood-streaked muzzle first one way, and then the other, studying him before it attacked. It cast heavy shadows in the moonlight and sank in the snow, so it wasn’t a spirit - under all that fur it _must_ be mortal.

Link cursed the moon, the gods, and the uneven ground, and charged at the mocking white fox.

“I don’t have whatever it is you lost,” said the white fox with its blurry, childlike voice.

Link overcorrected for his missed strike and promptly fell. His stomach threatened mutiny at once, and his vision blurred as he pulled himself upright.

The white fox snorted at him, circling to his shield side. “The hell is wrong with you? Besides being Hylian I mean.”

“What do you even know about anything? Hyrule is - is the center of the damn _world_. Ignorant provincial _nobody_ ,” spat Link, lunging at the white fox again. “One of you cowards has it - you motherless thieving - stop _moving_ and answer me!”

“You - you’re _drunk_ ,” said the white fox, circling with dangerous grace. “How did you get anyone in this godsforgotten city to sell you that stuff?”

“I am _not_ ,” said Link, though the lie pricked his skin with fearsome heat. He brought his sword up again, telling his stomach firmly to steady itself. It shouldn’t be like this - it wasn’t last time. He must have miscounted bottles or - something. Maybe one got contaminated, or maybe he should have waited a little longer before dancing back to his own body. “Anyway it’s not your business. Get out! Leave me alone!”

“I say it _is_ \- you’re not much taller than me but they let you have a sword _and_ spirits? Why? What’s special about a moon-faced weakling like you? And where’d you get Sheikah magic from? That whole cursed tribe has been chained to the Hylian tyrants basically forever,” said the white fox, folding its arms across its chest.

“Then how do you know what Sheikah magic even looks like? If you’re not here to give his knife back, then just _get out_ ,” said Link. He took another swing at the white fox - but this time, it knocked the blade from his hand and grabbed his tunic.

“Don’t be stupid,” said the white fox in Rajo’s sardonic voice, shoving him into a snowbank.

He wanted it to be true so badly he thought his heart might wring itself dry.

He didn’t want it to be true at all - how could he bear it? Losing him to the darkness again, already? To some petty, cruel fox demon?

Link wept and retched in the snow, regretting the caustic burn of whatever had been in the last bottle he drank. He wished again that all of it could just unhappen like Zelda promised him it would.

Especially the bits after the demon claimed the corpse of the Gerudo king.

Definitely the part where she confessed she tried to seize the triforce for herself.

Absolutely the part where a stupid prophecy came into his life and ruined everything.

“Give me that mask and I won’t tell the guard about you. Tell me where you got it and what the magic in it does, and I might even give your sword back,” said the white fox, bending to pick up his fallen blade.

“No,” said Link, and scrubbed his tongue with clean snow.

“Whose knife got stolen and why are you looking for it _here_? Why don’t you go to the guard? And why do you smell like King’s Tears?” The white fox asked, testing the balance of the sword. “And _where_ did you learn to speak _my_ language?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” spat Link, shoving down the dread that question stirred in his heart. He pulled the mask of truth into place. “Why did you follow me?”

“I _wasn’t_ following you. I saw blue magic, and needed to find where it was coming from,” said the white fox in Rajo’s young voice. It stood over him, leveling the sword at his chest. “I don’t want to kill you. I just need what you have.”

Link stared up at the white fox, and couldn’t manage any words at all.

“I know the blue magic was in this garden. You have to tell me why - and you have give me that mask. It might be the key he sent me for - or the key to _finding_ the key. Sheikah were all about keys and riddles,” said the Rajo-fox. “You have to do what I say or bad things will happen. You don’t want bad things to happen.”

“Bad things have already happened,” said Link, taking the mask off again so he could scrub his stupid leaking face off before the tears froze to his cheeks.

“Yeah, well. I don’t care. Give me the Sheikah mask,” said the Rajo-fox. “Now.”

Link shook his head in denial, a pathetic sob closing his throat.

The Rajo-fox snatched it from his hands anyway, pushing the wicked fox mask up to replace it with the terrible enchantment. He imagined for a moment he saw glowing yellow eyes under the mask and furred hood, but he told himself - and his mutinous stomach - that he saw only his fear. That in this time his ancient enemy-friend-brother-son wasn’t yet lost to the darkness.

“Who are you?” Link whispered, praying vainly that the magic wouldn’t awaken.

“Why do you care?”

“It’s - names are important,” said Link, fighting to regain control of his tongue.

“Gan.”

“That is not a nice name.”

“Maybe I am not a nice person.”

“You _could_ be,” said Link, desperately thrusting all his will against the compulsion to say _too much._

“ _Nice_ isn’t worth two chipped rupee. People are terrible everywhere, and _nice_ is just a paper mask people wear over their wickedness long enough to get whatever they want.”

“You - don’t have to be like them. We could go away - far away from any other people at all - I know a place no one ever goes to.”

“ _We_? Why should _I_ go anywhere with a _Hylian_? You people are worst of all.”

“I’m not like that - I’m not like those bad people who hurt you - I swear it by the golden gods or anything else you want.”

“And why should I believe you?”

“Because I _can’t_ lie to you when you’re wearing the mask,” sobbed Link. “No one can. That’s what it does - the spirit in that mask. It makes people show you the truth of their heart, even if they don’t want to.”

Ganondorf laughed.

 


	11. Chapter 11

Moonlight caught in the facets of the sacred bluestone flute, making it glow like the wandering fire.

Ganondorf turned it over in his hands, fighting the urge to empty his guts in the snow. “What does it do? Exactly?”

“Many things,” said the sad Hylian boy. “There are songs that - when I play them on that - let me dance through time.”

“Show me,” said Gan, shoving the flute into the other boy’s pale hands. A little of the vertigo lifted when he wasn’t touching it anymore, and the pressure inside his head eased when he looked away.

All of which returned a hundredfold when the boy lifted the flute to his lips.

The first note caved his chest in.

The second split his head into a thousand excruciating fragments.

The third stripped away the world and dropped what was left of him into a cold worse than the icy river below the city. Nothing but pain existed in that timeless, frozen hell. His fraying lifethreads snapped and shattered in the unfathomable cold.

An age later, the sun rose through the white agony, stitching his eyes back into his head and stuffing him so full of emptiness that a gust of wind might blow his feet clear off the frozen ground.

“Sorry,” said the Hylian with a sniffle.

Gan tried to take a step and stumbled over some hidden nonsense in the snow. The Hylian boy caught him before he could fall, though the other wasn’t much taller than him. The boy held him steady with surprising strength as he shook the fog from his brain. “Din’s eternal flames - what did you _do_?”

“I made the sun dance,” said the Hylian with a heavy sigh, nodding his narrow chin towards the pale sky. “Now it is morning for everyone. But please - for me, the magic is different. Dancing the sun down the river where _you_ can _hear_ me play it is dangerous for you.”

Ganondorf lifted a hand to reassure himself the Sheikah mask hadn’t slipped. If the Hylian told the truth about its magic, then what he said _now_ must be true also, howsoever impossible it seemed. He looked around them - careful not to let his head slosh too much - marking the shadows of the dead trees and the fresh snow filling in their tracks. Even the satchel was half-buried under a glittering white drift.

“Where did you find such powerful magic, Hylian?” Gan shrugged off his clinging hands, trying another - more cautious - step. Graceless, but steady enough.

The boy choked and stammered through his answer. “Didn’t. Princess gave.”

“The sacred maiden herself just _gave_ that to _you_? An ignorant milk-faced _child_? Why?

“To remember,” said the boy, cradling the bluestone flute to his thin chest. The translucent instrument caught and held the sunlight even so, its baleful blue glow washing out the true color of the boy’s tunic and outlining the bones in his pale hands.

“What could _you_ possibly need to remember that a princess would even care about? Who are you to be so favored by the gods?” Gan punctuated his demands with a flourish of the stolen sword, but the boy didn’t even flinch. The implicit threat seemed not to mean any more to him than the cold itself - but perhaps the drink still thinned his blood and mazed his brain.

“ _Favored_? How _dare_ you,” cried the boy, charging at him barehanded.

Gan stepped aside easily, catching the boy’s wool tunic with his off hand to rein in his violence. The boy struggled and tore himself free only to crunch face-first into a snow-shrouded rose bush. He curled on his hands and knees in the snow and thorns, moaning something about failure. Gan decided he must be some kind of highborn swordmaster’s apprentice, to be so clumsy and miserable and still so overconfident in his strength. He’d seen the saiev in their cups often enough to know how reckless even a true warrior could be with too much drink in her belly.

Nabs told him once that the sour, creamy elixir they fermented from the Sun’s Crown plant was not half so heady as sweet majir, and considered to bring good luck and good health for avadha. She also warned him a single cup of the sharp, colorless distillation they called King’s Tears hit with the strength of a whole skin of majir.

“Answer me, Hylian,” said Gan, bending to pick up the fallen flute. It curdled his stomach _slightly_ less than before, but he could harbor no further doubt that this must be the key the warrior-spirit sent him to find.

“My _name_ is _Link_ ,” growled the boy.

“Don’t care,” said Gan. “Why did she give it to you? When? Why have you brought it here? Will it open the clock tower? _Can this unmake what is woven_?”

Link shook his head both yes and no, rocking back on his heels and scrubbing his sleeve across his face. “I can take you forward with me, but when I am going back? You will remain when I dance, and in the yesterday all of this is forgotten. _Everyone_ will forget.”

“Fine,” said Gan, shoving the flute at him, gesturing that he take it and rise. “Sing me downriver then, to where I find the orb of the spirits. I’m bored of looking for it.”

Link only shook his head in denial, not even looking at the flute. “I can’t do this either. The cost to hurry one turn of the sun for you is high enough - and what have you done in the hours that I danced away? Nothing. The magic drags you into the rapids. Do you understand? For everyone else, last night passed no different than any other. I can take you no further or the river will destroy you.”

“What good is a relic if you can’t _do_ anything with it?”

Gan threw the flute down in fury.

A cold hand seized the back of his neck.

“Don’t be _stupid_ ,” Link murmured in his ear.

Gan stared at the empty snow where Link had been not even a heartbeat before. At his empty hands. At the divot in the snow before him where the flute should have cracked or shattered against the neglected garden path.

“There is more magic in this world than you’ve yet dreamed, desert prince,” said Link, his grip fierce as death. “Don’t _ever_ do that again.”

“I don’t - what even happened?” Gan stammered, swallowing hard and praying that he wouldn’t retch. He couldn’t understand why the young Hylian witch-knight would conjure away his sword and flute but not the enchanted mask. “How did you know-?”

  
“Come,” said Link, shoving him off balance. “See the river frozen. See a little of what this _relic_ is good for.”


	12. Chapter 12

Morning light poured over the silent city, perfect and pure. Nothing disturbed the peace - not even the snow dared to crunch underfoot. Time moved too slowly for anything so vulgar as wind or noise. The residents of Clocktown moved like dream spirits, unseeing, unhearing, unhurried, their lives interrupted and leashed to the magic of the ocarina.

Until he reversed the spell, time would pool here. If he left the spell in place long enough, the whole city would drift clear of its moorings and become a realm unto itself, the residents trapped in amber, their world accessible only by dancing through the river or unlocking one of the shattered timegates.

He wasn’t sure how long ‘long enough’ was, or if he really wanted to find out, but he had no reason to doubt Rajo’s scholarship - especially regarding any subject where he’d believed the ancient Gerudo texts and holy Hylian ones stood in agreement. He only prayed Gan wouldn’t ask too many questions about it so long as he wore that infernal mask.

“Don’t let go,” he said, dragging Gan across the silent square.

Gan pulled his hand free by way of answer, and stumbled as the magic coiled around him, dragging him into the still waters.

Link swore, stomping around to his other side. He counted twenty and thought fondly of another drink. Preferably applejack. Something that would smooth the jagged edges inside his head and blunt his temper.

When he felt a little less like punching rocks, he seized Gan’s wrist again. Gan yelped in surprise, and very nearly pulled them both into a snowdrift as the magic let him return to more-or-less normal time. Or - at least the same current as Link moved in.

“ _I_ don’t have to be nice either, you know,” said Link. “Do you _want_ to spend the rest of your life in this city, surrounded by mean, selfish, ignorant, violent people? Because I can make sure of it.”

“Whatever,” said Gan, brushing snow from his unusual white clothes with his free hand and pretending the magic wasn’t affecting him. “Just because you have a few tricks doesn’t mean anything. Without that stupid flute what good are you? You probably can’t even get out of here, sword or not. You’re not any bigger than me - you’re nothing special - or why would _you_ still be here?”

“Th-there was a spirit,” said Link, ducking his head and choking on his own tongue under the unwavering glare of the mask. “He said to wait for a friend.”

“I’m _not_ your friend,” snapped Gan. “You going to believe everything some stupid spirit tells you? The golden gods set us free, or didn’t your magic princess teach you that?”

“She - taught me many things,” said Link. “Some of them were wrong. But it wasn’t her fault. It’s just - the gods let her make a mistake. She is good and kind and wise. You could be good, too.”

“I don’t care about _good_ , or _nice_ , or _friends_. I just need to find the _damn_ orb,” said Gan.

“Why?” Link managed to croak.

“Reasons,” snapped Gan.

“Maybe I - can help you find it,” said Link.

“I don’t need _help_ ,” shouted Gan with stubborn fury. “I need to get away from _people_. I need to find the orb before the demonstone finds _me_.”

“And if it does?” Link wrapped Gan’s hand in both of his own, praying to any power that could hear him that this time, finally this time, Ganondorf would be good, and everything would be alright again.

“Bad things,” mumbled Gan through the mask. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“We can leave right now. But you gotta trust me,” said Link. “I know a safe place.”

“Fine,” said Gan at last.

So he dragged Gan halfway across the city, and not two words between them the whole time - even when they passed through the shadow of the great clock. He pulled Gan past shopkeepers and farmers, hungover revelers and tired guards, and unlocked the wicket door in the big iron gate in the south wall.

“Hn,” said Gan, reaching out to prod the frozen gatesman standing beside it. The poor guardian tipped off balance, but the magic wouldn’t let him correct himself, nor yet fall.

“Don’t do that. It’s _mean_ ,” said Link.

“And freezing them isn’t?” Gan said, prodding the poor man the other way before Link could pull him out of reach.

“ _You_ wanted to know what the magic did,” said Link. “The only other way out of the city when you are small is through the waters that turn the clockwheel. How long can you hold your breath under water?”

Gan shook his head. “Fine - but once I’m outside, you go back and take the magic off them, or else.”

“Or else what-?” Link turned away, his heart aching fearsomely, and pulled Gan after him through the wicket door. In the weeks they’d been separated, Gan had embraced the casual ruthlessness that would always be the habit of his enemy - and yet.

And yet.

Under his caustic manners, under his bitter rejection of any and all aid or affection, the spark of Light persisted in the depths of Rajo’s besieged heart.

He felt Gan shrug as they stepped out into the open. “Just let them go. You don’t want to cross me, Hylian.”

So Link led him downhill into the shelter of a vast hollow log, and warned him not to move from that spot. Gan just snorted in contempt - and didn’t bother even answering his warning about the dangers lurking in the frost-bright tallgrass. Admittedly, mindless chu weren’t exactly _strong_ monsters, but Gan didn’t even have his knife.

He wasn’t sure he should give it back to him either, after last time.

Link released Gan’s hand, lingering a moment to watch the sticky-slow enchantment take hold of him again. He wasn’t sure why the time magics made Gan sick, or why the spells inside the ocarina affected him the same as if he was a normal person. Zelda wasn’t troubled by them at all. She held - and even played - the sacred instrument without flinching.

Then again, when she took her flute and sent him back to his childhood, she stayed behind. The song that carried him away to live his stolen years hadn’t affected her - and he learned to his sorrow the first time he accidentally befriended his enemy that Gan couldn’t dance through the river the way he did, either.

Yet of the eight bound by the prophecy, and the ninth sealed by them, Zelda alone also lived in that terrible yesterday, stranded without magic or strength or the weapons which had become a part of his soul. It was a time he couldn’t fit himself into, and even the forest closed him out not long after.

Zelda was kind to him, and they became friends for a while. Sort-of. She was after all still the Crown Princess, and he only a common orphan with a knack for sneaking past the castle guard.

The day came and went that he would have given her the stone of the forest sage, and she did not dream of storms. Or - not that she told him about. Years passed, one very much like the next, yet he never felt at peace in that time.

He kept the green on the forest though, at first. Against all reason, a part of him still hoped Navi lived in that time, that she would come find him and he could go back to living as a Kokiri.

But Navi did not come - and one day he could bear the discordant peace of Hyrule no longer. Zelda gave her treasured heirloom to him as a parting gift, as if she didn’t even know what it was for.

And now by its magic he stood more or less alone in the middle of a glorious winter morning at the end of the world, trying desperately to _stop_ remembering.

Link stood in the shadow of the great clock a long time, surrounded by people who would never know any of the things he’d done. For Termina, for Hyrule, for the Light.

“I’m sorry,” said Link to no one in particular.

He raised the ocarina to his lips.


	13. Chapter 13

The safe place proved to be a swamp. Or someplace _in_ a swamp. Or maybe - if the gods chose to be merciful - it would lay somewhere on the other side of the horrible, choking, tangled vegetation, far from the half-frozen, mucky waters. 

They’d walked almost four days already, from the hollow log below the city to the hidden reed boat tied under a lightning-struck cypress at the verge of land and bog. Every night and every morning on the long walk, Link built a little fire with shards of firerock arrowheads he kept in a belt pouch the way normal people carried money. They ate all the nuts and winterberries they could glean on the way, and somehow every morning Link found a brace of rabbits or wild cucco to roast.

This morning, it was cucco - and the spare one hung at the back of the little boat, though as afternoon tilted towards twilight, Gan began to wonder how they would ever cook it. Or if Link had any intention of stopping. Which, as the buzzing of hidden insects grew with every hour that passed, Gan wasn’t sure _he_ wanted to stop either.  

Especially when the dragonflies came.

Giant, carnivorous, _enchanted_ dragonflies with lightning for venom in their scorpion-like stingers, and deafening iridescent wings that shattered the waning light. 

Link shot down the first two pair with the bow and arrows he’d apparently left on the boat. When the abused wood snapped, pieces flew everywhere, striking them both. Link swore at the bow.

Gan swore at Link. “Are all Hylians this stupid? Who leaves _any_ weapon and nevermind a _bow_ where the thrice-damned snow can get it?”

“It’s always been fine before,” said Link with a sour face, picking splinters out of his palm while Gan poled them forward as best he could.

“Yeah, well maybe you should think about what it’s like for the _rest_ of the damn world when you play your stupid flute,” said Gan. “How far is it to solid ground?”

“I don’t know, not exactly,” said Link, picking up his own abandoned pole as another dragonfly noticed them and veered their way. “The swamp changes - it is easy to be lost here, so whatever happens, don’t go off-”

“Whatever,” interrupted Gan, pushing another fall of thorny, tangling vines out of his face. The closer they drifted to the creepy trees, the harder it was to push the boat along, and the more they had to wrestle with the growing things. But there were dragonflies hunting in the open places. “We’re both stuck on this stupid boat now, so whatever happens or doesn’t, it’s _your_ fault. Not mine.” 

A hurled deku nut from the mist off to the left somewhere cut short whatever answer Link might have given. The flash of shell striking steel seared his eyes, and his ears rang with the whistle of a second flying at them from the right. He struck it aside with his muddy pole and pulled Link down into the bottom of the reed boat, spreading the wolfos-fur cloak over them both. Another nut whistled past, and he clenched his teeth against the ominous drone of another dragonfly circling the boat.

“Gan - it’s ok,” murmured Link, grasping his shoulder under the cover of the cloak. “I know how to get us to the other side - I just forgot there’s more at twilight. It’ll be ok - you stay down - I’ll take care of it.” 

Gan grabbed his wrist before he could rise. “Not with the flute.” 

Link winced. “Ok.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Gan, letting him go so he could unfasten the cloak. “Hylian coward - hiding behind your _stupid_ tricks-”

“Am _not_ \- I just - wanted to keep _you_ safe,” said Link, his voice raw and cracking as the dragonflies tried to strike at them through the cloak. “I will drive them off. Stay put.”

“Go suck an egg,” snapped Gan, digging through his satchel for the handful of deku baba shells he’d managed to collect. “You don’t even know where we are, do you?”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Link, bracing to throw off the wolfos fur and stand again. “I’ve been here a _thousand_ times.” 

Gan counted six breaths as Link shouted and struck at the hungry insects. Just enough to draw their full attention. _Then_ he rolled out from under the cloak and hurled the first shell.

Five shells left. Four dragonflies still circling and at least two skittish deku scrubs in the twilight fog. 

Four shells left and the scrub to their left squeaking a hasty retreat. Link swore at him and cut down a dragonfly - but another flew from the mists to take its place.

Gan shouted and reclaimed the pole with his off hand to fling stinking muck at the closest bug. It dodged the mud and his first wild swing, but he managed to block its return strike and disable it with another shell. 

He kicked the stunned dragonfly into the bog and raised the pole to drive it under. Link shouted in warning. He couldn’t turn fast enough to deflect the one behind him. 

Lightning arced. Stinging, shattering, blinding pain crawled through his bones. He fell to his knees, dropping the pole. A clattering bounce, a wet smack, and an ominous blorp answered his slurred curses as he scrambled to reclaim it. Another lightning sting knocked him flat on his face in the bottom of the reed boat.

“What are you doing-? You stubborn fool - I _told_ you to stay put,” cried Link, slashing through another dragonfly as a whistling deku nut struck the little boat. “Get under the damn fur or _fight back_ already!”

“I _am_ fighting,” snapped Gan, thrusting his right hand into his satchel for the last three shells. He wasn’t sure he could hit a moving target until the tremors stopped.

The dragonflies couldn’t easily reach him at the bottom of the boat - but a deku nut caught him on the shoulder and flung him hard against the side, making the sad little craft rock perilously. On the rising tilt, one of the dragonflies caught him, and he dropped the deku baba shells.

Gan swore, scrambling after them through the pain, praying the stupid boat wouldn’t dump the shells in the bog.

“ _Do_ something or stay _down_ ,” shouted Link. “Forget the shells already.”

Gan hung over the side of the boat, watching through a red haze as bubbles rose through the slimy water. He wasn’t certain - he hadn’t actually _seen_ them fall overboard. He hadn’t seen much - between the flash of the deku nuts and the lightning and the pent-up magic pressing against the inside of his head, he could barely keep his balance.

A tiny skittering, hopping thing jumped at him and latched onto his hand. He yelped, jerking away. A dragonfly stung his neck.

Gan didn’t even remember falling, not then, and not after. Just the sharpness, and then the water. Every direction looked exactly the same, a murky sort of green-brown, with darker tendrils drifting towards him. He tried to kick away from them, but his legs were so heavy he could barely lift his feet at all. He turned his head, and his whole body twisted instead. Bubbles streamed up through his shirt and past his face, and flashing lights bounced through the water around him in the weird, heavy silence.

Gan closed his eyes. He wasn’t good at swimming anyway. 

Ticklish bubbles flowed across his face and neck, and he almost laughed, remembering how when he was very little, Nabs used to tease him with a peacock feather for oversleeping the call to lessons.

Something bumped against his head, and a new tightness gripped his chest. Strong fingers dug into his neck and shoulder, pressing him tight to a solidness at his back. Gan opened his eyes in confusion, but all he could see was red and brown and bubbles.

Then they broke through the frigid surface in a great clamor of light and noise.

Link dragged him into the bottom of the boat, rolling him into his side with blasphemous threats, thumping his back. Coughing up bog water hurt, but it hurt worse coming out his nose. He coughed, and wheezed, and coughed more, seeing nothing until he could manage to scrub his hand over his face and get the muck and hair out of his eyes.

“Mask,” he rasped in horror.

“Goddess bright, _too close_ ,” breathed Link, shaking his shoulder.

“Wait - stop,” said Gan, flailing gracelessly for Link’s hand. “Mask - where’s mask?” 

“Don’t worry about it,” said Link, pressing his hand too tightly. “It’s ok now.”

“ _Not_ okay,” said Gan, his voice broken and hideous. “Mask - go back-” 

Link pushed him back down as he tried to rise. “No - it’s gone. It’s fine. We don’t need it. Just lay down. Breathe. Ok? The bugs are gone. You’re safe. Ok?”

Gan nodded, waiting, gathering strength and will. He tried to feel the movement of the boat, tried to remember which side he’d fallen from, and when he met a blankness, which side Link dragged him back from. 

“Good - it’s ok now. Everything is ok,” babbled Link, relaxing his grip and stroking his arm instead.

Gan counted eight and rolled to his knees. The boat rocked - he lurched rather than leapt back into the water.

Link yelled. 

Gan flailed after a pale shape just under the surface - but found only a yellowed lilipad. He thought he saw another patch of white, but he couldn’t keep his head far enough above the water to tell. Then he couldn’t see it at all. Then he started coughing again. Then he couldn’t remember which way was up.

Link threaded his arms around behind him again, dragging him back to the reed boat. This time he trapped Gan under the wolfos-fur cloak as soon as he’d finished coughing up swamp water. He put his own back against the curved wall of the boat, and dragged Gan into his lap, babbling platitudes.

Gan wept, howling in raw fury.

“It’s ok,” said Link, pushing strands of wet hair off his face.

“You don’t _understand_ ,” cried Gan. 

“You’re safe now,” said Link. “I’ve got you.” 

“No - the mask - lost the _mask_ ,” cried Gan.

“Don’t worry about the mask,” said Link, bowing and winding his arms around his shoulders. “It’s not important.”

“I need it!” Gan cried, vainly trying to untangle himself from the cloak. “My entire _life_ was a lie until - until-” 

“So was mine,” said Link gently. “But it’ll be ok. We’re together now. I will be your friend.”

“But,” said Gan, unable to wrap words around the sucking hollowness in his chest. 

“You don’t need the mask with me,” said Link. “We are almost to the safe place. No one will find us there, and monsters can’t go there anymore either. I fixed it.”


	14. Chapter 14

Thin morning sunlight carved the fog into shifting gossamer veils curling back from the shallow waters. A small reed boat wove between stumps and sedges and towering kneed cypress, meandering towards the open marshland. A vast lumpy island interrupted the horizon, overgrown with button grass and forked sundrop and rambling myrtle. 

Enormous curving spikes cloaked in moss and chokevine and blue leatherflower rose above the scrubby trees spilling over the heart of the island. Blue-throated wrens and firetail finches gossiped among the greenery, and a few lazy heron on the sandbars kept wary eyes on the approaching children. Startled frogs plopped back into the water ahead of them, and curious fish investigated their wake.

When the reed boat starting bumping too frequently against the mud and roots at the bottom of the marsh, the fair boy in dark clothing handed his pole to the dark child in white furs, splashing into the water to help drag the boat up onto the sandbar. The herons scolded the trespassers, and flew away into the thinning mist.

The child in white hopped down from the boat, but kept the pole as he followed the boy up the shore. “What is this place?”

“It’s mine,” said the boy with a shrug and a lopsided grin. He pointed to a rough trail of lower grasses winding up the muddy green slope. “The ruins here are different from anywhere else - you’ll see.”

“Do you live in this place?” The child in white asked, pushing loose red curls out of his eyes. “Alone?”

“Sometimes. I don’t like people anymore either,” said the boy. “Come on - I want to show you something.”

The child in white followed another three steps and stopped, planting his muddy white boots and thumping the pole against the sand. “So why’d you drag me here?  _ I’m _ people.”

The boy rolled his eyes and retraced his steps to reach for the other child’s hand. “You’re different. Come on - I want to show you something.”

“No,” said the child, pulling out of reach. “How do you know I’m any different from anyone else?”

“Gan - don’t be stubborn,” said the boy. “You just are, ok?”

“Why?” Gan insisted. “And how did you know I’m a prince?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said the boy.

“You promised you’d tell me the truth,” said Gan, thumping his pole on the ground. “How do you think you know  _ anything _ about me?

“I,” said the boy, gesturing helplessly. He stammered the beginnings of words, trailing into silence, his blue eyes wide and searching.

“You have to tell me,” said Gan, taking one step towards the boy. “It’s the rules.”

“Because - I’ve seen you before,” the boy stammered at last, wringing his hands. “In the tomorrows. Bad things happened there, so I - I ran away.”

Gan moved closer. “ _ What _ bad things? What did you see?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said the boy, stuffing his hands into his trouser pockets and scuffing his dark boots in the sand. “It doesn’t matter anyway - I danced the sun and it is all forgotten now. This time it will be different.”

“Hn,” said Gan, tightening his fist around the pole. “What if you’re wrong?”

“It  _ will _ be different this time,” growled the boy, baring his teeth.

“But what if it isn’t?” Gan pressed, his golden eyes bright. “What if the spirit’s meddling just makes it all happen faster?”

For a long time the boy said nothing, staring a hole in the sand at his feet. “If you let me be your friend, maybe we can figure out how to fix it together.”

“Hn,” said Gan. “I’ll think about it. Show me whatever the stupid thing is.”

The pale boy in dark clothing sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. He nodded, gesturing for Gan to follow, and together the boys climbed into the dense greenery cloaking the odd little island. 

Gan paused often to stare at skittish lizards and waxy-leaved plants, mossy rocks and curving spikes sticking up through the trees. The other boy held his tongue, and waited for him every time. Even when his city boots slipped in the loose soil halfway up the slope, and he stopped completely to scrape away more dirt from the rust-colored rock beneath.

“What is this place?” Gan asked, slipping off his ruined gloves to touch the rock. 

“I don’t know,” said the other boy with a shrug. “I found it after the tomorrow they sent me away from the city, after she - after they - after the tomorrow of the war.”

Gan frowned at the rock another long moment. He stuffed his gloves into his battered satchel and stood. “Hyrule is already at war.”

“Yeah,” said the boy with a shrug. “The war started a long time ago. But in the first tomorrow, the war ended for a while when I lived in the forest. After the tomorrow of the moon, I tried to go home like they told me to, but the war was very bad in that time. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Hn,” said Gan, squinting up at the curving ruins against the glare of the morning sun. “How long have you been here? How do you know it’s safe?”

“No one ever comes here but me,”  said the boy. “Not even Deku or pirates or - just come see. There is a kind of metal tree at the very top where you can see for miles. You will like that part.”

Gan nodded, falling into step behind the other boy again, his golden eyes wandering everywhere except the path. “How old are you anyway? You look older than the innkeeper’s daughter, but not much.”

“I dunno,” said the boy, lifting a curtain of vines so Gan could climb the overgrown steps jutting out of the hill on the other side. “Does it matter?”

“Maybe,” said Gan. “How old were you when you saw me before?”

“Twelve,” said the boy tightly. “I think.”

Gan nodded, concentrating on the switchback climb until they stopped to rest in the shadow of four fat spikes at the foot of a much steeper incline. He scraped moss from the nearest spike with his pole, prodding at the regular rounded lumps marching up the surface. 

“How old was I in that time?” Gan asked, watching the other boy sidelong.

The boy winced, flexing his left hand and balling it into a fist several times before he answered. “Big.”

“Ah,” said Gan. He thunked his pole on the ground again and started up the slope first.

They climbed in silence after that - or rather, they let the morning carry the conversation without them. Eventually they reached the crest of the first hill, where the soil stretched too thin over the ruins for much to grow. A narrow bridge of roped-together palm trunks joined the first hill to a cave-like hollow in the side of the next, and to either side, the sun threw long shadows under the curving spikes.

Just before noon, they finally reached the foot of the leafless metal tree, with its bare stubby branches and its ladder made of rusty metal rope. The pale boy gestured for Gan to look closer, and turned his own attention to kicking melted-looking rocks heaped around the crest of the hill. Gan set the pole aside to climb the ladder. Halfway up he stopped, staring not at the horizon, but the island below.

“Bones of the leviathan,” he murmured, his golden eyes tracing the almond shape formed by the curved ribs stretched between and beyond the hills below him.

The other boy found a rock that cracked, and started prying it open with his sword. The shriek of metal pulled Gan’s attention again, and he hurried back down.

“Stop that,” he shouted. “Don’t you know anything? You’ll break it!”

“It’s fine. I think it just rusted,” said the pale boy, wriggling the blade deeper into the crack and giving it a wrenching twist. “I should have covered it somehow or put it below, but it’s kinda heavy, so I didn’t.”

“You unlettered  _ idiot _ ,” shouted Gan, charging at the other boy and shoving him hard. The pale boy stumbled, and Gan twisted his wrist until he let go of the abused weapon. He cursed as he pulled it free, and growled over the damaged edge and bent blade. “You’ve wrecked it already.”

The pale boy stared at Gan in baffled surprise, absently rubbing his reddened wrist. “It’s just a sword.”

“Yeah? And where will we get another one? What’s wrong with you?” Gan demanded, gesturing rudely.

The pale boy blushed and fidgeted with the hem of his tunic. “Why are you so upset?”

Gan flipped the blade neatly to thrust the hilt at the other boy. “Don’t disrespect your weapon like that again.”

The pale boy took his sword back, snapping it to the side automatically before returning it to its sheath. “I don’t understand why it matters. It’s  _ safe _ here.”

Gan turned heel and fetched the forgotten boat pole without a word. He stomped back to the cracked metallic rock, wedging the wood into the hollow space and throwing his weight against it until the hollowed out halves groaned another hand’s breadth apart.

“Gan,” said the pale boy.

“Just shut up and help,” said Gan, heaving against the pole.

Together they pried and heaved and cracked the thing wide open in only a few minutes, revealing a shrouded lump inside. The pale boy drew the cloth away, gesturing at the wire-wrapped stone sphere inside.

Gan frowned at it. “That’s bluestone. Isn’t it.”

The pale boy grinned, reaching in to fetch the sphere with a grunt of effort. He lugged it to a much larger green rock with a hollow in the middle, and heaved it in. It splashed in the stagnant water pooled there, catching and holding the winter sunlight inside itself.

Gan swallowed hard, and sank down on one knee, further bracing himself with the splintered boat pole. 

The pale boy drew his sword and struck the sphere in one graceful motion.

The stone rang a single perfect note.

Searing copper-blue light flowed from the caged sphere and over every part of the island. Centuries of rust and sediment and vegetation burned away in an instant. Hills flattened out into terraces, rocks reformed into rusty crates and cannonballs and coiled chain. Railings and cables knit themselves back into place. Riveted metal panels poured through time to sheathe the shining ribs of the lost ship. 

A whole flock of terrified brown cucco rioted into the air around the two children who had so suddenly appeared in their midst.

The pale boy’s grin faltered when he looked at Gan’s solemn face. He returned his battered sword to its sheath with the same automatic gestures. He waited, but Gan said nothing either. 

The cucco settled again, farther from the intruders, complaining to each other about the fallen state of the world and scandalous lack of worms. The pale boy began to unbuckle his swordbelt.

“Don’t,” said Gan without looking away from the glowing bluestone-and-gold sphere.

“Why? It’s safe here,” said the pale boy. “Isn’t it amazing? A whole ship! It can’t go anywhere, and there’s some holes, but-”

“ _ Never _ abandon your weapon,” said Gan solemnly, pushing to his feet and dragging his gaze away from the heart of the enchantment. “You might need it.”

“But-” began the pale boy.

“It’s the rules,” he said, and strode to the railing. He laid his hand on the verdigris brass, looked over the edge, and promptly threw up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Temporal mechanics are hard! But there’s a method behind it, I promise.
> 
> Tl;dr - the timeshift shard, orb, and ocarina each affect time differently. 
> 
> I have a plan for a little exposition later in this story, though I don’t know exactly how deep it will end up after revision. Therefore, if you want it, a smol note on how it works.
> 
> The shard can be tuned and/or used in conjunction with the ocarina to create a small radius of altered or normal time. 
> 
> The orb creates a much bigger radius alone, but placed in the ship’s array creates a vastly larger and more organic bubble of time. 
> 
> Although these two objects draw on Skyward Sword lore, they are not transporting our smols quite that far back. The orb in this story was left running in the ancient days after Skyward Link’s last use of it, and I theorize that eventually the ship’s bubble would have ‘caught up’ to Skyward’s time. When the orb was finally turned off again, by default it opens a ‘memory’ of the last time it was active instead of the ancient days. 
> 
> The shard has incomplete programming as it were, and is only capable of ‘remembering’ when it was just before the last time it was turned off, so every new strike resets it, in a sense. Leaving it off and meanwhile jumping backwards in time creates an exploitable bridge between diverging timelines once turned back on. Leaving the bridge active for an extended period may have additional consequences…


	15. Chapter 15

Ganondorf stood under the sluice gate until his feet ached from standing on the bumpy metal floor. He let an obscene amount of clean water pour over him and away down the drain, and still he stood in the sun-warmed deluge.

It didn’t help.

He threw the lever to seal the cistern again and dripped his way across the small room. He didn’t bother drying off. 

He slipped down the empty hallway, annoyed that the ship’s lightcrystal lamps glowed both day and night. Time was already turned sideways here, and the constant amber light belowdecks only made it worse.

Gan left his door open to catch whatever passed for a breeze in this miserable summer, and pulled his felted mattress and all his linens onto the floor. He climbed over the heap and stretched out on the itchy horsehair straps with his long hair draped over the side to keep it off his neck.

He stared up at the faded old blankets Link had strung up over his bed like a storybook tent, and tried not to think.

Ganondorf was not good at not thinking about things.

Link came looking for him before his hair even stopped dripping. “Lunch is ready. I found peppers this morning, and one more jar of winterberry jam in the crate that washed up last week.”

“I’m not hungry,” said Gan.

“Ok, we can eat later,” said Link. “Come help me pack it into the ice closet?”

“No,” said Gan, closing his eyes.

Link didn’t go away. “Ok, you can help tomorrow. Do you want to go fishing? I fixed the poles.”

“No,” said Gan.

Link sighed, stepping into the room. His boots made the floor thump even through the scavenged, waterstained rugs. “We could work on the loom some more. I’m sorry I said it was stupid yesterday. I’m just not very good with small stuff like the wires and bolts and-”

“Do whatever you want,” said Gan, rolling over to face the wall.

“Um,” said Link, stopping somewhere in the middle of the room. “Gan? What happened to your clothes-?”

“It’s hot,” said Gan. “Go away.”

“Um,” said Link. “But you’re Ge-”

“I know what I am,” snapped Gan. “Leave me  _ alone _ .”

“I’m sorry,” mumbled Link. “I just - you’ve been down here a while. I wanted to help.”

“You can’t,” said Gan.

“Well. Not if you don’t tell me what’s wrong,” said Link. “It’s solstice you know. We should do nice things today. Feast and stuff.”

“Solstice here or solstice out there?” Gan sighed. “Anyways I have a headache.”

“Oh! There are still more potions,” began Link, turning for the door.

“Not that kind of headache,” said Gan, throwing his arm over his eyes. He was already sweating again.

“Oh,” said Link softly, his hollow steps dragging to a halt. “Another storm?”

“Yeah,” said Gan. “On both sides.”

“Would more topaz help? I can go look through the rock boxes again,” said Link.

“Sure,” lied Gan.

Link knocked on the door barely an hour later. If it could be said an hour held any real meaning in this place.

“I brought tea,” he said after a long silence.

Gan groaned, twisting to look over his shoulder. “You do know what the word  _ hot _ means, right?”

“This is different. It will help,” said Link. “At least try it?”

“If you promise to shut up and leave me alone,” said Gan, gesturing for him to come or go as he pleased.

Link crossed the room more quietly this time, setting a crate full of rocks and bottles on the edge of the stripped wooden bed frame. He uncorked a bubbly green glass bottle and offered it without a word.

Gan swore, propping himself up on one elbow to take the steaming bottle cautiously. The glass rim seemed cool, which was odd - but then the dark amber liquid made a clink sound and it was so cold on his tongue it made his teeth hurt. 

Also it was disgusting.

Link fidgeted, splotchy pink staining his pale face, but he didn’t say anything.

“What in the  _ hell _ is this brew?” Gan asked when he managed to stop coughing.

“It’s tea,” mumbled Link. “With honey.”

“Ugh - whatever you did, this stuff is  _ not  _ tea,” said Gan, laying back down and resting the cold bottle against his forehead. “The ice was a good idea though.”

“I did find some more topaz,” said Link, blushing harder.

“It won’t help,” said Gan, closing his eyes. “I just said that so you’d go away.”

“Oh,” whispered Link. “Sorry.”

Gan shrugged. “It’s not your fault.”

“I - could go to Clocktown if you want,” said Link. “There is lots of food in the ice closet - I wouldn’t be gone long. But I could buy things. New clothes? Or books?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” said Gan. “When the storm is over.”

It  _ was _ a good idea. Most of the clothes he’d brought with him on their escape had worn ragged long ago, or else were too warm to even think of wearing. The boots had become uncomfortably tight too. 

But - he suddenly couldn’t shake the idea that something terrible would happen if Link left the ship tonight.

“Um,” said Link.

Gan held his tongue until his ears itched from waiting for him to finish. “Say it. Whatever it is can’t possibly be as annoying as your endless fidgets.”

“Would it help if - that is, I could help you with your hair,” stammered Link. “If you like. You don’t have to. I was just thinking, the heat. And your curls are long. And-”

“ _ You _ know how to braid?” Gan cracked one eye open in disbelief.

“I’m not very good,” mumbled Link. “But at least - I can get the tangles out. If you like.”

“Hn,” said Gan, confused by Link’s distress. 

Maybe it was just the headache, but he didn’t make any sense. Hylian men didn’t wear long hair, and most Terminan men didn’t either. He’d commented before about Gan’s ragged braids, but he’d always dismissed it as more foreign prejudice. Yet - now he seemed on the edge of genuine panic at the possibility of offending him with the offer. 

“Sorry,” said Link, taking a step back. “I’ll just go - um - feed the cucco. Sorry.”

“If you promise to be  _ quiet _ , they can wait. You spoil the hens too much anyway,” said Gan. “The combs are in the blue box on the table.”

“Oh,” said Link, blushing so hard he looked like he’d gotten erisfruit on his tongue. 

Gan snorted and closed his eyes again, tilting the bottle to keep the cool side against his face. Link gathered his tools and a pile of rejected cushions, settling quietly above the head of the bed. For all he claimed to be bad at small things, his hands were gentle, and he never lost his patience unweaving what was left of Nabooru’s work. He even combed memoryleaf oil from root to tip, smoothing his curls in idle silence. 

Gan pretended his eyes weren’t watering, and Link didn’t say anything either. If he even noticed. He sectioned off a couple loose twists, and set the first crosses of a tiny spinebraid right down the center.

The rain started as Link bound the end of the very last plait.

“Thank you,” murmured Gan.

Link blushed, and nodded, and stood up without a word.

Gan caught his hand. “If it really is solstice - then I’m seven today.”

Link nodded.

“It’s kinda funny, the way you did it,” said Gan. “I don’t know if you ever met my sister in the tomorrows you left behind. She wore her hair like this on feast days.”

“Do you miss her?” Link asked, blue eyes fixed on the floor.

“Yeah,” confessed Gan. “But I can’t go back.”

“I’m sorry,” said Link.

“It’s not your fault,” said Gan.

Link flinched, and tried to pull his hand away. 

“I’m not a nice person,” said Gan, trapping Link’s hand more firmly. “No matter what the fierce white spirit told you, you don’t have to stay with me. You don’t have to be nice all the time. You don’t have to pretend to be friends.”

“I’m not pretending,” said Link, returning the fierce grip but frowning at his empty palm. “Why are you pushing me away again? What did I do wrong?”

Gan took a deep breath. “In the tomorrows you left behind - was I a good person? Tell me the truth.”

“It’s complicated,” said Link at last, working his narrow jaw and scrubbing his hand over his pale face. “But this time will be different.”


	16. Chapter 16

Autumn in Termina brought riotous color and cooling rains, even at the far edge of the southern swamp. The marsh tides shifted, bringing forth another carefully arranged cache every few days.

The oppressive, humid heat finally broke just after equinox, and cool winds from the mountains seemed to lift Gan’s dark mood. A little.

At least, he laughed when he cursed the cucco for all going into molt at once. They had more than enough eggs pickled and frozen for half a year of breakfasts even if the hens never laid another, so the only real trouble it made lay in keeping the goats from eating too many of the feathers. Gan declared that as long as they were already sneezing feathers, they should gather it all to make featherbeds and down cushions for the winter.

So Link drove all the cucco into the midship hold, and every morning they collected bags of feathers to be washed and sorted. Gan lost interest after the fourth day, but Link didn’t mind. The work kept his hands busy, and he was glad of it. Every wind brought with it memories he’d rather it didn’t, and that was more than trouble enough without idleness to magnify it.

Gan still helped sometimes, feeding the animals and fishing and cleaning things. Most of the time though, if they weren’t exploring the marsh and swamp, he lazed about. He made half-hearted bids at building dozens of different things, looms and bows and puppets and wheeled contraptions of mysterious purpose. Not one project could survive a third headache - Gan abandoned his designs with complete disinterest each time.

Link couldn’t bear to push him. He was only seven - he should have a chance at a happier childhood. Let him skip rocks for a whole afternoon. Let him nap and daydream. He was born a prince - when in this time had he ever needed to do work? Let him swing on twistvine and play in the mud if he liked. 

What need had they of machines? Anything they couldn’t already salvage in the marsh, Link could easily fetch from one city or another and stash in one of the treasure rooms while Gan was napping. The ancient ship needed so few repairs to make a house of it, he could manage them on his own. Some would be easier if he were big, but mostly because he’d let himself get in the habit of living in that body last time.

“Hey,” said Gan, flinging himself down on the rug and leaning on a bag of unsorted feathers. “How long you gonna do that today?”

Link shrugged. “You wanna do something?”

“Maybe. I made new toss-rings. Better than the last set - you can even make them hook a little if you don’t have a crosswind,” said Gan.

“Let’s go try them out in the trees,” said Link, shoving his handful of feathers into the proper bag and tying the corners tight.

“Sure,” said Gan with a shrug. “Grab your cloak though. It will probably rain while we’re out there.”

“No storm?” Link asked lightly. “Here, your ribbon is crooked.”

Gan sat forward, letting him untangle the wide white-and-blue twill ribbon and smooth his braids into a tidy high horsetail again. “No storms. Just the usual afternoon shower. It’ll be good. Keep the mosquitos off.”

“There,” said Link, cinching up the lark’s head knot and wrapping the tails around for a square. “Before I tie it off, want your hair doubled up today?”

“Nah,” said Gan. “We won’t be going anywhere it would snag.”

“And - done,” said Link, pulling the extra ribbon into a crisp bow. “Last one to the boat’s a rotten egg?”

Gan made a rude noise, pushing to his feet and stretching lazily. “Nah, that’s a stupid game.”

“Ok,” said Link with a shrug. He turned for the door - and yelped in surprise when Gan shoved him off balance from behind.

Gan laughed as he pelted for the door, knocking over a pile of feather bags after him.

Link groaned as he dug himself out of the bright sorting room - at least the bags didn’t spill too much this time. He wasn’t surprised at all to find the hatchway grate pulled closed. He could waste ten minutes hauling it open from underneath, or he could burn fifteen going the long way around to the starboard stairway. That is,  _ if _ Gan hadn’t already rigged an obstacle ahead of time.

By the time he caught up, Gan was lounging in the little reed boat, half a hundred plaited cypress bark hoops threaded on ribbon loops at the stern, chewing on a sugarcane leaf, snickering at him.

“How did you even survive out there before me?” Gan asked with a giggle. “You fall for that  _ every _ time.”

Link shrugged and laughed with him, too glad of Gan’s good humor to stay annoyed. 


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T-12

Ganondorf threw another pebble overboard and watched it plop into a puddle far below. The water level in marsh seemed higher every week, and the evening rains lasted longer. It was weird, but at least he had a few more days between lightning storms now that the air had cooled some.

“It won’t last though,” he complained to the goat at his side, folding his hands on the verdigris brass railing. “Evil calls to evil.”

The goat grunted, and carried on chewing her mouthful of sweetgrass. Link hadn’t come back this morning either, so he’d had to squelch out across the sandbar to gather more. He could have just dragged a hay basket up from the forward hold, but that was really meant for winter. Anyways, fresh was better for her, as she was still giving milk. Not that he was any good at the milking - but maybe Link would be back tonight, and he wouldn’t have to get kicked again for trying.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he told the goat. “He makes sure none of us go hungry. Shouldn’t that be enough?”

The goat bleated at him. 

Gan gave her another handful of grass from his satchel. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me either. I mean - I  _ know _ they promised me to the demon, but we’re under the orb. And I’ve been good. Or tried to be, anyway.”

The goat slobbered on his hand trying to get all the sweetgrass before her sisters could notice she’d cadged more out of him. 

“I guess you couldn’t understand. You’ll eat almost anything that doesn’t fight back,” he said with a sigh. “And fish is ok. I guess.  _ Everything _ he cooks is  _ ok _ . It’s just - boring. I miss harissa, and lamb, and yogurt, and honeycakes, and - mother of sands, I even miss pickled salad. I remember the cucco at home when they got the leftover pickles from feast days - ours would probably  _ riot _ .”

The goat snorted.

“Yeah,” agreed Gan with a sigh, leaning against the rail and staring out through the time-veil at the marsh beyond. “And he better not get himself snapped up by monsters out there or I’ll kick his butt. Stupid Hylian.”

The goat just chewed her grass.

“If he doesn’t come back tonight, I’ll have to pull more in the morning. A  _ lot _ more,” he said. “And I should probably set out fish for the cats and cucco, too.  _ Then _ \- well. He better be back tomorrow, or else.”

The goat sneezed. 

  
“Ok,” he sighed. “I’ll give him  _ two _ more days.  _ Then _ I’ll try magic.”


	18. Chapter 18

Falling.

 

Roaring darkness. Slippery smothering silence.

 

Blood.

 

Brilliant crashing light and a teasingly familiar song rolling through him like distant thunder. 

 

_ Ghost unlaid forbear thee-! _

 

Link jerked awake when he hit the ground, gasping for air. Every joint ached and his skin felt halfway flayed. His head was stuffed with searing magenta lightning and he couldn’t make his eyes work.

“Dammit,” he grumbled, slapping his hand against rough cypress bark beneath him, trying to ground himself.

The buzz and chatter of the swamp filtered slowly through the blurry echo of words he couldn’t quite remember, or maybe never understood at all. His vision cleared more slowly, and he still felt dazzled by the golden afternoon when he managed to haul himself to his feet and put his back against the trunk.

Link checked sword and quiver and bow. All in order. Better than him, in fact. He hadn’t travelled this rough in a long time. It might have been easier if he’d remained in a younger skin, but his best hunting bows required both height and greater draw strength.

Not that he’d flushed any quarry larger than a rabbit.

He uncorked a fresh bottle of applejack, lingering in the shadows until his pulse finally settled. Boar and deer and water buffalo roamed the edge of swamp and woodland - he’d seen them before. Hunted them, before. 

Long ago.

Now that he needed meat for Gan? Nothing.

Not that he actually wanted to do it. Cooking was one thing. Carving cooked meat from bone was another. Rabbits, cucco - most of the time, he could still manage. The blood, the butchering of a large creature - that was different.

He should have just gone to a local village or Clocktown market and bought things.

Or to the farm. Smoked sausages would keep a long time in the ice closet. And he could have gotten more applejack. 

Corfo would shake his head about selling him another crate so soon, but more rupee always won that argument before, why not again? Anyways, that way made it easier to ensure their prosperity from a safe distance. To them, he was nothing more than a steady customer, a rich stranger from far away.

Link corked the empty bottle. It wasn’t too late - he could still go to them. Grab the baskets from the boat, rent a cart from a village near the farm to deflect awkward questions. He could figure out explaining where he got the preserved food later. On the way back.

He lost himself in planning what to buy and how to get it back to the shipwreck as he hiked back to the reed boat. These things had to be carefully managed. Magic hidden. Clothes changed.

If Corfo refused to sell him what he needed, then he would need to raid a manor or something. A distillery. A temple. Maybe one of the Gerudo storehouses - they distilled an even more potent spirit, clear as glass and kissed with gold. He could steal strong spices from them too - but he would need to arrange for more old crates and barrels so they could drift into the marsh at high tide. Gan liked discovering lost treasure. Maybe it would cheer him up.

Something moved in the shadows to his right. Large. Heavy.

The arrow jumped from the string before he realized he’d even lifted his bow.

A weighty thump.

Startled cries, birds shrieking belated alarm. Too many scrambling, crunching, thudding footsteps in every direction.

He pushed through the dense undergrowth, scanning the shadows for the others. There shouldn’t have been any blins here. Not in this time. Not anymore. 

Enormous shapes crashed past him to either side as he reached the clearing. The noise of others fleeing tapered to nothing as he found the bright swatch of white in the darkness.

A perfect hit. The arrow had buried itself in the center of the water buffalo’s starred brow, killing it instantly.

“Fuck,” he said.


	19. Chapter 19

Ganondorf paced the length of the muddy little island, stabbing the ground with the splintered boat pole, impatient for the rain to stop. The rumbling redness inside his head whispered that he could _make_ it stop - that he’d never even read of such a spell didn’t matter to that voice. More insidious than the threats and promises of the spirit in the Rova’s blue demongem, the voice like banked embers murmured _possibilities_ and half-remembered dreams.

Another few minutes - no more than a quarter hour - and false dawn would give way to true. He could reach even now, and open the shadow roads. He could already see the paths taking shape, if he didn’t look right at them.

To his left lay a lumpy, velvety blackness that might be another, larger island. Then again, it could just be a dense cluster of stumps and vines. Easier to tell after the sun rose - but he couldn’t see a good place to set the grapnel. If he waited for the light and the nearest branch proved to be too low or too far, he could be stuck on this mud patch until twilight.

If only the raft hadn’t sunk.

But it had.

Ganondorf cursed the gods, secured the pole across his back, and embraced the shadows. He ran up the widest road, directly into the heart of the maybe-island. In the shadow world, fat silver trees stood in a rough arc around a heap of smooth white stones at the top of the central hill - it could mean anything or nothing in the mortal world.

If he was lucky, the shadow road ran over the ground, not under it. He whirled the grapnel about as he dropped back into his own world, ready to catch the first anchor point on offer.

There was none.

He fell - but not much further than half his height. He landed poorly, and slid a short way along the wet marble slope, but that was nothing. A vague pink light clung to the damp stone walls of the grotto shrine, and pale fluted pillars defended the pure spring water bubbling up at the center.

“Oh,” he breathed.

Gan dropped the grapnel and stripped off the makeshift harness he’d made for the boat pole and the extra rope. He smoothed his hands over his wet braids and straightened his sash. Not that anything in his power could really make him any less muddy and bedraggled and in every way completely unsuitable to go petitioning spirits and fairies.

“I didn’t know there were any shrines out here,” he said to the empty spring. “So I don’t have anything to trade.”

Gan folded his hands behind his back and took a step closer. Nothing changed: the pink light grew no brighter, and the water bubbled no higher. He decided there must be small cracks between the slabs of marble letting the water drain away.

“I will bring things later, if you help me now. I have many treasures on the ship,” he said. “I’m looking for someone. It’s important. You surely know everything that happens in your land - you know which way he went. Tell me what you’ve seen.”

Ganondorf stood at the edge of the water, waiting in the quiet. Outside, it sounded like the rain had stopped.

“I have some pickled eggs left. If you want those, you can have them.” Ganondorf dug the sealed bottle of eggs from his satchel and knelt to set it in the shallow water.

He waited in the emptiness and quiet a long time.

“Please,” he said.


	20. Chapter 20

A shard of noon detached from the horizon, twisting sunwise with a skein of shimmering blue enchantment. Painful brilliance touched the roots of the ancient cypress trees, flowing onto the rocky slope. The light stretched and crystallized into the form of an ageless warrior, broad-shouldered and densely muscled. He carried a silver chest into the remote fairy shrine, and his shining boots left carmine prints in his wake.

A slender boy with long red braids and rough clothing lay fast asleep beside a glittering pool. The warrior looked down at him in silence, his glowing white eyes betraying no hint of his thoughts. He set the chest aside with the boy’s slim provisions, and strode into the water.

Shrill laughter echoed in the tiny space, and a green-haired woman-shaped spirit rose from the center of the pool. Flowers bloomed over her translucent skin, and she floated over the water to smile at the warrior.

“You have come at last, sweet boy. Will you do a small favor for me?” 

The warrior bowed, but did not speak.

The laughing green woman floated closer, grasping his hand and tipping a set of gold earloops and rings set with pink sapphires into his gloved palm. She murmured into his long ear as mortals might speak to their beloved: “ _Cleanse my shrine._ ”

The warrior tilted his head, rolling the baubles so the pink light made them sparkle. He spoke softly, yet the sleeping boy stirred and the marble pillars trembled,. “ **What prayer carried these into your waters?** ”

The green woman laughed. “You ask, yet  _ you _ answered it - now answer mine!

She twisted away, vanishing in a glitter of pink and green light. White flowers with blue hearts floated on the surface of the water.

The red-haired boy woke, rolling to his knees at once. He reached for a weapon he wasn’t wearing, golden eyes fixed on the spiral-forged sword on the warrior’s back.

“ **You have left the Light,** ” said the warrior.

“I had to,” said the boy. “You said you would change my stars - I’ve done everything you said, but bad things still happen. Your stupid Light Orb only makes me wicked somewhen else. It doesn’t  _ fix _ anything.”

The warrior closed his fist around the jewelry and turned, looking down at the boy. “ **Why have you lost faith in the Light so soon?”**

The child squared his shoulders, undaunted by the solemn might of the divine warrior. “Why should I believe in something that doesn’t believe in me? I have given up  _ everything _ for your stupid Light, and all it ever does is take  _ more _ . You promised if I found the orb everything would be ok. You promised I wouldn’t turn into a monster as long as I renounced my mothers, my magic, my people. You promised he would be my friend.”

The fell warrior tilted his head, rolling the baubles in the cage of his fingers. “ **You are not in good health? You have grown horns and hooves and gnashing sharp teeth? The boy with the time-key has been cruel?** ”

“That’s the problem, stupid,” snarled the boy. “What more does your damned Light want from me? Everything I have done, and still he gets all weird about  _ everything _ and now he is  _ gone _ and not even a stupid provincial fairy will answer where.”

“ **Only a strong and righteous mind can command the powers of Light,** ” said the warrior.

“But I  _ didn’t  _ even  _ try _ to command,” cried the boy. “I asked! I was  _ nice _ ! I gave her gifts!”

The warrior opened his fist in silence, cradling the jewelry in the hollow of his bloodstained palm.

The boy winced. “It was all I had. I - can’t get back to the ancient iron ship without using magic. A  _ lot _ of magic. Anyways nothing there is mine to give. I knew it wasn’t worth much but I - I’m bored of being alone.”

The warrior strode from the water and took a knee before the red-haired boy. He stretched out his empty hand as if to caress the boy’s dirty face. He stopped short instead, and tucked one crooked finger beneath that stubborn chin. “ **Have you forgotten, child of prophecy? I am always with you.** ”

The boy shrugged and pulled away, averting his golden eyes. “What good is a guardian spirit when you never even  _ speak _ until it is too late?”

“ **Even gods must obey the law of the Three** ,” said the warrior.

“Yeah. I know, free will. You said before,” said the child with a sulky glare.

“ **Come** \-  **I will return you to the safe place,** ” said the warrior, offering his hand. “ **Monsters thrive on fear and cruelty and hatred. Starve them of it, and choosing good will come more easily. I promise.** ”


	21. Chapter 21

Ganondorf lost count of how many times he climbed the metal tree to watch for Link’s return. He harvested every scrap of marsh grass within easy reach of the mired ship, and hauled basket after basket of hay and grain from the hold to keep the goats and cucco happy. 

Gan searched the ship for something, anything that could make a better raft than his first disastrous attempt. He found a handful of reed poles and forgotten barrels - but the seams proved unsound and anyways there were barely enough poles to lash together for a bed and nevermind a boat.

On the fourth day of solitude after the shrine , it dawned foggy and cold. He could barely see the other side of the ship and nothing at all of the marsh. So he penned the cucco and tethered the goats to the hay crib, and went out to patrol the sandbar again. He wondered how a ship so large had run aground in such low water, but at the edge of the orb’s magic, the grass thinned and the sandbar itself lay underwater half the time. The swamp must have been a different sort of place when the wreck happened. 

A rhythmic splash interrupted his thoughts, and he ran along the shore to meet it. He cried victory when he recognized the shape of the little reed boat, charging into the water at once to grasp the prow and help drag it up onto more-or-less dry land. 

Link said nothing, throwing all his strength into the work of managing the heavily laden craft. The moment he decided the little boat was secure, he threw down the pole and hefted one of the lidded baskets in silence.

“Hey,” said Gan, grasping his shoulder to make him stop. “Let’s lower the chain net first so you don’t have to carry it so far.”

Link refused to look at him, and didn’t try to speak. He just - waited.

So Gan let him go, and pulled a second basket off the boat. Trudging through the sand proved far harder with nearly half his weight in food perched on his shoulder. Link made it look easy, ignoring every attempt to persuade him to let the ship’s machines do a share of the work. 

Gan tried to be patient with him, for he realized when Link turned back for the next basket that his friend was not just filthy but covered in old blood. He hurried to set his own burden on the ice closet shelves, and called out for Link to stop. To speak. To tell him if he was hurt. 

Link said nothing. His expression remained weirdly blank, more like a masterwork of a conjured puppet than a person. But his pale skin still held living warmth, and his cold blue eyes did focus on the path ahead of him. Sort of. He never stumbled, anyway.

Gan couldn’t even halfway match Link’s silent, determined pace - so he lowered the great net on his own, and loaded as many of the baskets into it as he could. Link took three more all the way to the ice closet while he worked, but at least he came to the deck afterwards to help haul the net up.

When they closed the crowded ice closet on the last basket of meat Gan caught his shoulder again. “Hey. You look - tired. I’ll worry about food today, ok? The animals have already eaten too. You’ve done more than enough work for a  _ month _ .”

Link hitched one shoulder by the smallest possible margin.

“Look, you’re only going to hurt more later if you don’t rest. Maybe you didn’t notice, but you’ve been out there a long time,” said Gan.

Link averted his eyes. A little. 

“Come on, a bath will make you feel better,” said Gan, steering him down the hall.

Link roused some when they reached the door of the washing room. He brushed Gan’s hand from his shoulder and waved him off. 

“It’s ok, I remember. Hylians are weird about that stuff,” said Gan. “Want tea when you’re done?”

Link shook his head no, and slammed the door behind him. But - didn’t seem to notice that it bounced back against the frame, and hadn’t latched. Link never missed that sort of thing.

So Gan folded his arms, and argued with himself about making tea anyway, and when he should tell Link about the silver chests the warrior had given to them, and whether he should say anything about the fairy shrine. 

But mostly Gan stood beside the door and spied on his friend as he stood under the open sluice gate without even taking his boots off.

Eventually, he did strip off his horrible purple tunic, wadding it up and then just - dropping it on the floor. Gradually, the rest followed, until the silent Hylian stood bare to the skin, surrounded by his discarded clothing. Some of the dried blood started to flake off and fall away, but there seemed to be less on his pale back anyway. 

Link picked up the stiff bristle brush they used to clean the washing room and stared at it for a while like he’d forgotten what it was. Gan almost interfered when he started scrubbing himself with it, turning his fair skin angry pink.

But - maybe he needed it. The hunt had done something to him. Maybe this would help. Maybe this was like when the saiev came back from a raid, and they took turns jumping into the oasis with erisfruit on their tongues.

Link stood in the water until there wasn’t enough left in the cistern to do more than drip, and still he stood on the punishing metal grate, staring at the wall.

“Enough,” said Gan, pushing the door wide open. He collected one of the vast blue towels and draped it over his friend as the First Roc placed the cloak of war on the Exalted Sun in the festival plays. “Whatever happened out there, it’s ok now. You’re home. You’re safe. And - I have a surprise for you.”

Link turned, a strange, strangled squeak coming from his chapped lips.

“Don’t worry, it’s a good surprise,” he said, pulling him into a fierce hug and leaning in to whisper. “Don’t tell anyone, but it’s cake. Real, actual, butter-and-honey-and-almonds  _ cake _ .”


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T-11

A somnolent quiet ruled the fog-bound spring morning, denying the light. The damp clung to skin and cloth and grass and rock, until all the world weighed twice what it ought to. Water dripped from his face, from his hair, from his bow, attending his creeping steps with a constant hushed patter.

Any normal bow would be ruined or at best useless in such weather. Link would have preferred to wait for the day to clear, or to take other weapons entirely to meet his opponents alone. But. Gan was proud of his latest invention, and impatient to measure its performance beyond their little target range. 

Link crept through the tall marsh grass, listening to the muffled whistling of the sleeping enemy ahead. He couldn’t hear Gan behind him anymore. Hopefully it meant he was holding ground, covering his back. Better if he’d stayed behind, safe under the orb - but Gan was stubborn. He wanted to see the intruders for himself, and he wanted to see firsthand how the two models he built compared in a real contest. 

Against his better judgment, Link let himself be persuaded. It was so  _ good _ to see him excited about something again. 

To have a little bit of Rajo back. 

Except - he wasn’t the same person at all. Might never become generous, passionate, brilliant, headstrong  _ Rajo _ again. 

Three years letting this time unspool more or less in a normal fashion, and it still hurt. Link wasn’t used to these wounds that persisted, day after unending day, resisting every potion and song and fae benediction. He considered for the thousandth time, perhaps he should sing the ship slower. Buy more time for both of them. 

But Gan would notice the seasons move out of sync. He would demand explanations Link could never give him. The necessary elisions were already hard enough.

So he compromised, and started letting him come along sometimes when he patrolled their marsh. Whenever Gan asked him difficult things, he told stories from the time of the moonfall. When even that was too much, he retreated to the room above the bent rudder, on the other side of their fish pond where bits of the lost ship’s plating had buckled and torn off. 

He rather wished to go there now.

But another nest of lizal had come into their marsh. Better to drive them away soonest, before they fortified their camp. Before Gan could do something reckless. Bad enough he insisted on helping.

A tiny flare of orange flagged to his right. He froze, trying vainly to judge the angle between the haze of banked coals beyond the snoring lizal and this new light.

A faint thwip.

The orange light arced too much for a plain bolt - but too low for a deliberate cloudshot.

Link pressed himself flat into the mud.

The faint glow exploded with a deep, sulphur-scented  _ thoomp _ and a stinging cloud of splintered wood and hot ash. A heartbeat later the lizal screamed in rage and pain, distorted shadows rising through the fog, swinging their burning spears wildly. 

Link rolled to his knees, nocking an arrow. The lizal didn’t notice. Yet. He fired. 

He fired a second, stood, and fired two more.

Wet, heavy, smacking  _ thops _ as the broadheads found their marks. He strode through the fog, firing bolt after bolt into the nest. Every shot made him wince at the unfamiliar high-pitched creak of copal and silk and char, the low hum and  _ thwom _ of twisted brass wire under immense stress. He’d fired the damn thing a hundred times already but he couldn’t persuade his body to believe the bizarre weapon wouldn’t shatter in his hands. 

He kept all his attention on the enemy ahead. He would not think about the incendiary arrow. He would not allow the possibility of Gan advancing so far ahead of the position he should have held. He would not allow that Gan might press the attack.

Step. Sight. Release.

The fog thinned as he neared the crackling fires - one last lizal scrambled in dazed loops, trying to find a safe escape route. It fell with a final wheezing squeak. Four chu wandered among the little fires and the fallen monsters. They hadn’t noticed him yet, but they would. He’d prefer a spear against these. Or a glaive. A halberd. A claymore.  _ Anything _ that would hit hard enough to shred their resilient outer membrane.

Even with his fastest bow, the damn things recovered too quickly to take down so many from this range - and the jelly would ruin every arrow used against them. 

A distorted war cry from his right. Too high, with a weird trilling. The chu twisted, their translucent bodies vibrating in resonance with the sound. A tiny flag of orange light at the edge of his vision.

Link pivoted left, sprinting into the heavy fog. He counted breaths, steps, heartbeats, measuring them against the remembered arc of the first. He flung himself into the mud as the incendiary hit. A second followed before his ears even stopped ringing.

A silence.

A whoop of victory from far too close.

Link dragged himself back to his feet. He stalked through the thinning fog, his whole body humming as the bowstring he didn’t dare touch. He flipped the arrow in his fist backwards. It would buy his mind an extra second to counter instinct with reason. Maybe even two.

Gan repeated his war cry, dissolving into laughter at the end of it. He paced a victory circuit through the center of the decimated camp, his bow back in its sling, his damp red braids giving back the angry firelight.

“You were supposed to stay back,” said Link, despair and rage gnawing on his heart.

Gan laughed, turning with a savage grin. “It worked, didn’t it? These swamp fireflowers yield  _ twice _ the oil, and the native bombflower pollen is waxy enough to resist even this soupy weather. And then! Finding saltpeter in one of the treasure rooms, and-”

“You killed them,” said Link, closing his fist on the arrow because he didn’t trust himself to put it away.

“Oh, it wasn’t  _ that _ strong of a blast,” countered Gan with a dismissive gesture. “Without your deadeye shots we’d never have been able to get the whole camp.”

“The  _ plan _ was to drive them  _ away _ . Not kill them,” shouted Link.

Gan raised a brow, his triumphant grin twisting into a wry smirk. “Was it? Do you really think I believe that?”

“It is - we always - it wasn’t necessary, ok?” Link stammered, struggling against the inrushing heaviness of his accusation.

“Sure it was. Lizal don’t give ground unless they’re summoning others,” said Gan with a shrug. He carried a cedar pole in his right hand with chilling confidence, a violent young warlord already, proud of his strength. “So these are a different breed than the ones back ho- I mean, I already know how vicious they are. And I’ve seen the bones.”

“Oh,” said Link, staring at the carnage because he couldn’t bear those piercing golden eyes any longer. “You weren’t supposed to.”

Gan crossed the emptiness, holding out his hand, his voice strangely soft. “I know you’ve been taking care of things. I know you’re older than me, no matter what you look like. But  _ I’m _ not a baby either. You don’t need to protect me from the truth just because it isn’t pretty or nice or soft. Ok?”

“No - but maybe I  _ want _ to. You’re still only nine. But I’ve already - I’ve  _ done _ bad things. So - this? For me, against everything else? I’d rather you didn’t have to even  _ see _ this ugliness, much less have to - to bear the - to do-” stammered Link, queasy and miserable.

“I know,” cut in Gan, cupping his shoulder and drawing him into an awkward embrace. It felt so  _ strange _ being almost the same height again. Last time, that had only lasted a single season, and barely a year in the one before. And he was so  _ thin _ this time. “It’s ok. You do what you have to. But so do I. It’s my home too. We should protect it together.”

“But,” Link began.

“You don’t have to be the lone hero all the time,” said Gan with a derisive snort, pulling him closer. “What is it you always tell me, hm? This time it will be different?”

“Yeah,” whispered Link, fighting back tears.


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T-10

Twisted hanks of shredded cedar bark smoldered in the crude little hearth, refusing to burn. The flame would win eventually, but for now these fresh bundles only poured fragrant smoke into the cold room.

Gan didn’t mind, not really. It stung a little, but that meant he could blame his aching eyes on the green tinder. If Link suspected the truth, he didn’t say anything.

Then again, maybe he was hiding his own weaknesses the same way.

“I think it’s colder this year,” he said, prodding at the fire with his forked stick. “Want another cup of tea?”

“Still full,” said Link with a shrug. “I can get more blankets out though. Want to sleep by the fire tonight? I can help move your things.”

“Maybe,” said Gan, laying aside his stick and leaning over to peer into Link’s almost untouched cup. It wasn’t even steaming anymore. “Don’t be stubborn. Cold tea is gross. I’ll get another pot brewing while you get cushions and stuff.”

“It’s ok, really-” began Link.

Gan caught his wrist and took the cup away from him. “And if you come back with King’s Tears on your breath again I’m tying you to the damn mast.”

Link recoiled, blue eyes wide with panic. “If I have _what_?”

“I’m not stupid. I know you keep a stash of it somewhere,” said Gan, pouring out the cold tea into the steam pot he’d designed into the side of the hearth. It still felt strange to waste water, even after four years. At least this would salvage some of it to soften the harsh winter air.

“No - I mean, what you called it. What a strange thing to call drinking-spirits,” said Link too quickly. “Sorry - I didn’t know the word before.”

Gan frowned. “It’s not a word for booze. It’s a _kind_ of booze. My people make it whenever there’s enough Sun Crown plants flowering. It’s kinda important for festivals and rituals and funerals and stuff. It’s for purification, and speaking to spirits or ghosts, and for offerings, and for walking the spirit roads, and sometimes it’s used as medicine.”

“Oh,” said Link, his face flooding with pink.

“How did you get so much of it when you don’t even know what it is and what it means?” Gan shook his head. “You shouldn’t drink it so often - it’s too powerful for most avadha, and you’re not even half as big as the smallest saiev.”

“Sorry,” mumbled Link, shrugging off his blanket and getting to his feet. “I got it from - an old friend. I didn’t know.”

Gan made a rude noise. “Not much of a friend if they didn’t teach you basic stuff like that. Majir can make you sick, but too much Tears in your belly _will_ kill you. My sister almost died once because of it.”

“Oh,” said Link, barely above a whisper.

“It’s fine,” said Gan with a shrug, busying himself with the kettle. Nabs would be seventeen this spring, because he defied curfew and stole from the healers while they were trying to fix what he’d done to Dira. “Make sure you bring the wolfos fur too.”

Gan tidied away the leftover dinner mess. The kettle simmered with a pleasing mumble as he built a layered sleeping pallet out of flat-ish cushions and the itchier blankets. The patchwork white wolfos skins went on the top, and he built a curved sort of wall with fat cushions around the far edge from the hearth.

Link tried to drop the last armload of blankets on the bench and leave. Gan made him take a fresh cup of tea and sit down in front of the fire again.

“Maybe time doesn’t mean much to you,” said Gan, sweetening his own cup with a heaping spoonful of King’s Honey and wondering vaguely if Link knew what _that_ was. “But I’ve been watching the stars when the weather is good. I can’t be sure of the patterns on this side, not yet, but out there, it’s about a month to solstice.”

“Time is still important. It’s just - different,” said Link quietly.

“Hn,” said Gan, folding himself down onto the wolfos skin next to him. “Unless I lost count, it’s four years ago today Angnu died of the red cough. I killed hundreds of my own people that winter. More probably died after I left.”

“Oh Gan-” began Link, cracks in his voice.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen. I never _meant_ for the accidents to happen either, but that doesn’t change that they _did_ ,” said Gan, cradling his cup in his hands. “Except the time I tripped the Exalted instead of Roc Avish and she fell into the midden. And the one when I hid cactus thorns in all the teachers’ cushions but I really meant just to get _my_ teachers. And when the quarry master triggered the slime bucket I’d set up for the weaving master. _Those_ accidents were _hilarious_.”

Link slouched over his tea. “You’ve never told me those stories before.”

“I try not to think about it,” said Gan, watching the fire wrap around the smoldering cedar bundles. “Angnu and Dira were a little older, but we were in the same lessons because I got ahead of my yearmates. They might have gone into the sands this year, if not for me. Maybe the elder mothers will let Dira seek their Name anyway. They won’t survive the Trials, but maybe as a poe they won’t be in pain. Or maybe Murasa will come take them away to play with the other stalkid forever.”

Link frowned, testing the heat of his tea with a cautious fingertip. “What happened?”

“A year before I left, we skipped lessons and snuck out to see the horses the raid brought back. All Hylian, not wild. Dira liked the ash gray one best, but he wouldn’t get near the fence on his own. So we climbed up, and Dira got to scratch his ears and feed him honeyglass. But they reached too far, and fell. I lost control of the horse.”

“So the whole herd panicked,” murmured Link into his tea.

“There were lots of accidents like that, and more avadha and criminals vanishing in the sands all the time. It’s just how things were,” said Gan with a shrug. He felt weirdly numb as he said it, more like reciting dusty old history tales than something that he’d actually seen happen. “I was always different from other ilmaha, and I was so bad at normal stuff everyone called me Hopeless. But my mothers were our Rova - which is like being a chief and a sage and a healer, but all at once - and they let me be their apprentice. I was good at that so I didn’t care. They were - like me. Different from everyone else. They weren’t nice people either.”

Link didn’t say anything to that, so they sat in the quiet for a while. The cedar bundles finally caught, flaring high and hot. Link flinched away from the searing brightness, spilling his tea. He hissed curses, trying to brush it off his pale gray trousers. Gan bit his tongue to resist the temptation to soothe his burn by magic. The warrior spirit said it would get easier to be good with practice, but it really didn’t.

“Anyways. I wonder sometimes, why my mothers told everyone the plague was my fault. Why they made sure it would get worse. They _wanted_ me to be King. It doesn’t make sense,” he said, cautiously tasting his own tea.

“Maybe they just wanted everyone to be afraid of you,” said Link softly. “Most people were, in the first time.”

“Hn,” said Gan, squashing the questions that tried to crowd onto his tongue. Link rarely told him anything about that future. If he pushed now, Link might stop talking altogether. “Then they aren’t as clever as they think they are. People do stupid things when they’re afraid. And they _don’t_ listen.”

Link shrugged, blue eyes fixed firmly on the fire. “Maybe. I dunno. All the Gerudo I met except one called you _The Great Ganondorf_ pretty much all the time.”

“Who was the one?” Gan asked before he could stop himself.

“A lone thief,” murmured Link. “She asked if I fought for you. When I told her I didn’t,  she asked me to spy on your Rova, and bring her something from the temple. She told me you stole from women and children. That you killed people. She alone refused to obey an evil King, and the Rova punished her.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Gan, mind racing, trying to imagine who would ever say something so foolish. “Every warrior of the people will do the same if they have to when a raid goes out. And why would she think a _Hylian_ followed _my_ orders? Anyways what did she want you to steal?”

Link shrugged. “Just some silver gauntlets.”

“The _moon’s fist-?_ ” Gan almost spilled _his_ tea. Nabs had been trying to find that relic since forever. “Her spirit gem was amber, wasn’t it? And her eyes gold, like mine? Was she wearing the red of the Saiev still? Or the purple and black of a Roc? Tell me the truth.”

Link winced. “White, with crooked blue and orange stripes. She had lots of jewelry, I don’t remember what color the stones were. But yes, her eyes were gold.”

Gan rocked back against the fat cushions, a prayer of thanks on his tongue. He’d turned his back on the cruel gods on the night he learned his terrible fate, but this! Who but the Lady of Sands could show such mercy to a monstrous demon’s doomed host? It made his heart ache to hear that even in that disastrous time, Nabooru would defy the fury of the Rova and desecrate the ancient temple of the Lady Herself to fight by his side.

Link hunched further over his tea, mumbling a miserable apology.

“Don’t be sorry. This is a good thing. An _amazing_ thing,” said Gan, his thoughts racing away in a hundred thousand directions at once. “Do you really have no idea? That _lone thief_ was my older sister. Nabooru avadha Saiev. And that pattern - the sacred gods’ teeth. That’s not for just anybody you know.”

Link shook his head. “I guess I don’t know many Geldo things after all.”

“Well, yeah. Nabs doesn’t like Hylians. Why would she teach _you_ any truth she didn’t have to? I mean - even you said we were at _war_ in that time. You were our _enemy_ ,” said Gan, scrubbing a hand over his face and struggling to give a damn that his eyes were leaking again. “There are only two stories about those gauntlets, both in the Book of the King. Which - you don’t even know that! Mother of Sands - ok, all Geldo are avadha. You know this?”

Link nodded. “Avadha and ilmaha, women and girls. Except one.”

“Yes and no. Gods, the Hylian tongue is so _stupid_ ,” Gan sipped his tea, trying to weave a sensible answer. “Our laws are different than yours. When an ilmaha is about my age or a little older, they petition the council of elder mothers for leave to seek their Name in the Sands. Sometimes they don’t wait for permission, and just _go_. Those ilmaha don’t always come back, but the point is - the trials are different for everyone, and on the other side an avadha comes back to us with her Name. But when the Lady of Sands opens the spirit roads to the Trial of the Eight - which is rare as a Sun Crown flower - an ilmaha who dares and not only survives but wins a Name? By our law, he becomes King.”

Link frowned. “She said a man is only born every hundred years, and he is king by law. The end.”

Gan made a rude noise. “And how many Hylians have you met that would even try to understand our ways? _My_ people don’t give you things just because you were born. You have to earn your place in the pattern. That’s what the gods’ teeth _is_ \- the Great Pattern that drives all others. Our King wears the sacred cloth, and his Exalted, and his closest advisors. Spirit and knowledge, sky and earth, sun and water. They’re like - gears on a vast machine. They can’t _do_ anything without the other, without the space between, without _power_ -”

“Stop! Please stop - just - stop ok? _Stop_ ,” cried Link, his voice raw and broken. He dropped his cup, heedless of the mess, throwing off his blanket and scrambling to his feet.

Gan hurried to unwrap his own blanket and set his tea on the hearth, chasing after him. He caught up in the hall only because Link tripped over a ragged bit in the rug. He wrapped his arms around his haunted friend, trapping him. Gan waited, saying nothing, letting him struggle and weep and yell until he wore himself out. Like Nabs did for him, long ago, when he was very small.

The spirit was right - Link must have _known_ he was fated to rain destruction on everything good and bright the moment he used the Truth Mask, and still tried to befriend him anyway. Without understanding anything important, he looked at a monster and dared to say _you could be a nice person_.

He was so brave.

Gan cursed himself for being so slow to understand the puzzle. The truth of his heart. Link didn’t even want to hurt his worst enemy. Gan remembered how the hunt two years ago weighed on him. He’d heard Link startle and shout himself awake from nightmares a thousand times.

But.

He’d seen Link fight.

He would still do what he had to.

Gan stroked Link’s fine golden hair, and pointed him towards the eating room again. He had to push his exhausted friend along, even after he pulled the door shut to keep the heat in. He managed to make him kneel among the furs and cushions, and dragged the soft blankets over.

“Why,” rasped Link.

“It’s cold,” said Gan, kneeling beside him. “Also, late. You should sleep.”

“Not tired,” mumbled Link.

“Just lay down then,” said Gan with a calculated shrug. “I’ll tell you a story Nabs used to tell me when I wasn’t tired either.”

Link groaned, but let himself be toppled sideways. Gan pulled the blankets up and lay down beside him, propping his head on his fist and planting his other hand in the middle of Link’s chest to keep him from getting up. The temptation to pour magic through his fingers grew enormous. Almost as vast and terrible as the temptation to pull the magic into his words and sing his Will into the world again.

 

_Once upon a time, in the place where the rivers dance like the moon, in the place that holds the bones of the foolish serpent who tried to eat the sun, there rose a Great King. Hideous, greedy demons beset the People day and night, north and south, east and west, for they wanted nothing better than to hurt whatever was beautiful and destroy whatever they couldn’t have._

_But though the Great King was not a warrior, he was clever. With his right hand he lifted among the People a champion in golden armor and forged for her a vast golden sword._

_No warrior in the world could defeat her, and only one could match her._

_Her name was Moon, and she stood at the left hand of the Great King. She wore armor of spotless silver and her great silver axe was a glory to behold…_


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T - 9

Falling.

 

Always and forever, falling through the gray roiling fog with the buzz of an argument he couldn’t quite make out filling his ears.

 

_ No more-! _

 

He hit the bed with a painful smack, drenched in sweat. He ached from crown to toe, and his tongue was so dry it hurt to even move it.

“Morning,” said Gan from the shadows. “There’s tea, and egg pie with mushrooms. Fed the goats already so we can eat in peace.”

Link grunted, scrubbing his face with a corner of the blanket. Gan had turned into an early riser again, and damn smug about it.

“C’mon lazybones. Don’t want to waste the good weather,” said Gan, crossing the room and offering a hand up. 

Link pulled a face, but accepted. He felt raw all over and he wanted nothing more than to pour a drink or five down his dry throat and go back to bed. 

Gan pressed a mug of strong tea into his hands, shooing him out into the hall at once. He was right - the spring sunlight already glared stupidly bright. He’d have preferred it keep raining, at least till noon. Usually southern Termina was downright sodden in early spring, but if Gan wanted a sunny day badly enough, the weather tended to oblige.

Given his anxious fidgets through breakfast, he probably  _ did _ want an extra set of hands for some project or other. Link was glad he’d found passion for creating and exploring again - but couldn’t he wait until ten? At least?

The tea helped, but he was on his fourth mug and following Gan towards the back of the ship before he realized it wasn’t just sugar sweetening his tea. 

“There’s rum in this,” he said, wincing at the hoarseness in his own voice.

Gan shrugged. “Just a little. You woke me up a few times yelling in your sleep last night so I figured you could use it.”

Link swore. “Sorry. You - should probably go back to your own room again. It’s not as cold as it was and-”

“And let you scream yourself sick half the night? How about no,” said Gan with a rude gesture. He took the stairs two at a time, muttering something about the squeaky railing. “Drink your tea.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” grumped Link. He thought about pouring the tea overboard for spite - but it  _ was _ tasty.

Gan turned at the landing and pulled a ridiculous face. 

What could he do but respond in kind?

The project proved to be some weird reed and rawhide boat propped up on cedar runners at the edge of the torn lower deck above their fishpond. Link climbed through the maze of rope to look at it closer. “If you would’ve just built on the shore you wouldn’t need help carrying it.”

“We’re not carrying it anywhere. I rigged a winch abovedecks too, just in case the first launch isn’t perfect. Here, climb in,” said Gan, gesturing to the weird boat as he opened one of the wooden crates along the far wall.

Link lifted the edge of the rug draped over half the boat - and jumped back with a curse when a pile of glistening, translucent purple octo guts rose up in his face. 

Gan scrambled to trap the inflated guts under the rug again. “Damn stubborn Hylian - get in! Now I need your weight to counter the lift, before it jumps off the track again.”

Link stared at the absolutely baffling tethered floating guts as Gan cursed him roundly and heaved a bag into the bottom of the boat. “I didn’t realize I’d hunted this many octoroc.”

“This isn’t even half a barrel. Dammit, at least help balance the load? Loose one more on your side, and slip the pins out,” Gan shouted, pulling cedar pins out of the reed frame on his side to free it from the ropes. “Either get in or help me launch it.”

“The hell,” cried Link, trying to make sense of Gan’s design. “The water is forty feet away-!”

Gan made a rude noise. “It’s a  _ twenty _ foot drop at most.”

Link ducked under the ropes to look. “Thirty. And there’s no possible way it will fall clear the pond wall.”

“That’s why we’re gonna push it,” said Gan with a manic grin. “Pull your pins and put your back into it. Or are you  _ scared _ ?”

Link threatened him with one of the rough cedar pins as the ropes strained to stabilize the weird boat. “I’m not scared of you or anything. That  _ doesn’t _ make this unstupid.”

Gan clucked and crowed at him.

So he pulled the pins and put his shoulder against the stern. The little boat shuddered along the cedar rails, and halfway to the edge Gan urged him to leap into the weird craft and get ready to throw the rug off.

So he did.

The boat lurched off the rails with a stomach churning drop as he hauled the rug off the rest of the inflated bladders. Gan whooped victory as the weird little craft bobbed and jerked through the air with clusters of inflated octo bladders tied to every rib. He grabbed a fistful of bladders from under another rug and leapt from the deck before Link could manage more than a shriek of denial. 

Half the octo guts burst under Gan’s weight, but he just barely caught the edge of the floating boat. It rocked violently, threatening to throw them both overboard, but Gan only yelled for him to take the bladders and tie them through onto the stern. Once his hands were free he pulled himself into the boat and set to inflating more bladders from the bag. They raced to get more tied as the boat jostled away from their ship, sinking ever closer to the water. 

One of the guts burst, and another beside it. Link hurried to tie a fresh one in its place, but two more went on the same side. Gan yelled at him, and he yelled at Gan. The boat tilted further, ropes straining. Gan leaned against the rising side, desperately trying to untie a bundle of bladders. 

Then the cluster at the prow broke.

They both hit the water mid-yell. Link flailed through the murky water, trying to regain his wind and find Gan and smother his panic all at once.  _ He _ could swim well enough, but Gan-

“It worked-! Look at it go,” cried Gan, his triumph apparently not at all dimmed by the fact he was still spitting water.

“You absolute raving lunatic,” Link shouted, striking towards him. The water behind the ship lay at least two fathoms deep, maybe more after the heavy rains. Gan seemed to be keeping his chin above the surface - for now.

“Maybe - but  _ look _ how far we got,” cried Gan, turning and bobbing in the water, clawing wet curls out of his eyes with one hand and gesturing towards the ship with the other. 

“Din’s fire what is  _ wrong _ with you? You’re swimming the wrong way,” shouted Link, diving under the surface and pouring all his strength into a mad dash forward.

Gan kicked off further, from perversity or spite, keeping himself out of reach. He caught Link’s arm before he could fix his grip and hauled him to the surface, laughing. “Look - it’s still going. We can’t go back to the ship  _ now _ or we’ll never catch it in time. Come on-”

“In time for what?” Link spluttered, glancing back at their ship. Nearly a hundred yards already.  _ He _ could make it back easily from here - but he wasn’t sure he could tow Gan back in this body if they went any farther.  _ Why _ did he let himself be talked into this?

“Ha-! There goes another balloon,” said Gan, pointing at the empty boat. Without them in it, the whole thing had risen back into the air, but with every failing bladder it dipped down again. “Pretty sure all the ones at the front popped before it dumped us though. Come on - we gotta catch it.”

“We can build another - let’s go back,” said Link, catching at his sash.

“And waste half a year’s work? Not on your life,” said Gan, kicking out after his flying boat. He wasn’t terribly fast or graceful, but he was determined to stay on this mad course.

So Link followed.

The wind carried the boat another fifty yards before the last bundles of octo guts gave way. They were still ten yards away when it hit the water sideways. Gan swore, pushing himself even harder - but he simply didn’t have the speed. Link dove beneath the surface and shot ahead of him, but the craft still tipped upside down before he reached it. He shoved it upright and wound a fistful of tethers around his arm, turning about to tow it.

The boat mocked his efforts, first refusing to move at all, then bumping painfully against his back and hip and shoulder.

Gan whooped victory from somewhere between him and their ship. Link tried to aim for his noise, focused only on the work. Nothing could be allowed to exist but the next stroke, the next breath, until the whole boat rocked violently and he managed to lose hold of the tethers.

“Get  _ in _ stupid,” groaned Gan, bending over the edge to catch his hand. “Why would you swim when you have a boat in your damn hand?”

Link let himself be hauled into the craft, sprawling on his back across the woven cedarbark benches bracing the middle of the narrow boat. It sat worrisomely low, but Gan showed not the slightest concern for taking on water. He busied himself with freeing the long oar from their harnesses against the inside ribs. 

“We are  _ not _ doing that again,” rasped Link when he could breathe again. He gestured to encompass the boat and everything.

“Maybe not  _ today _ ,” said Gan with a broad grin. “I need to build a machine to fill the bladders for the next launch. I hope you haven’t eaten all the honeyglass, cause that was  _ gross _ .”

Link groaned, laying his arm over his eyes as Gan settled in to paddle them back to the shipwreck, idly humming a few bars of a weirdly familiar reel. He couldn’t quite place the tune, but its playful lilt somehow suited the mischief of the whole disastrous experiment. “You and machines. Why do we need a flying boat anyway?”

“Why not?” Gan returned with a charming shrug.


	25. Chapter 25

The weather continued fine for weeks, clear and bright in the morning, with enough rain every evening to keep the marsh ponds overflowing. Saltgrass and sweetgrass and reeds alike climbed higher every day, and every bird in the whole swamp forgot how to go to bed at night.

The flying boat continued to spectacularly refuse to work. They emptied three more barrels of octo guts attempting to launch from the upper deck after he realized the damned things would inflate _themselves_ when secured to a falling object of sufficient weight.

Moving the launch runners took most of a week, but it was worth it. Gan doubled the length of the rails and turned the whole into a sort of curved ramp. It took a few tests to get the angle right, but that design almost tripled their distance.

“The main problem I think is still the bladders,” he said, picking his teeth with a fishbone. “Even with the wind-up bellows test, not one survived a half hour.”

Link grunted, considering over another bite of fish. “How many are left?”

“Couple bushels,” said Gan with a shrug. “Enough for another flight or two.”

Link whistled, tossing the spiny fins into the fire. “No idea I’d hunted so many.”

“I might have helped,” said Gan, poking at the next batch of fish. Not quite flaking yet, but even after three helpings, the scent of roasting peppers and citron and hot basil oil made his mouth water. He felt a little guilty enjoying the spoils of some stranger’s deep misfortune, but surely letting it rot in the marsh would be worse. Whoever’s ship lost forty barrels of Gerudo trade goods over the side was surely far away by now. Or sunk.

High tide brought all manner of things into their marsh, but the biggest finds were always a couple days after a hard storm. This particular wreckage though, they found just a few days ago, caught in a pond a half-hour’s launch hard astern of their ship.

Link licked his fingers clean and poured himself another cup of tea. “Sneaky bastard.”

Gan shrugged. “I found a spawning ground near that abandoned shrine. Set up a string of lures and nets in the rain, empty and reset when it’s clear and bright. Why spend all day hunting something when a couple good traps will do as well?”

Link grunted, prodding the edge of the coals with a pensive look. “What if your net caught something innocent though?”

“If it was dumb enough to fall for my lure, then it was dumb enough to get caught by an octo,” said Gan, sliding bits of roast fish and peppers into his bowl. “Does it matter whether it was my net or a beast’s maw if it was doomed either way?”

“Just because a creature isn’t smart or lucky doesn’t mean it deserves to die,” said Link to the fire.

“It’s not about deserving or not, good or bad. It’s just part of the Great Pattern,” said Gan, savoring the burn of pepper oil on his tongue. “Dig a well today, lose the oasis tomorrow. Don’t dig _any_ wells, and throw a thousand lives upon the mercy of the Sands.”

Link said nothing, prodding a coal away from the fire, turning it with his stick, and poking it back in.

Gan let him be, and concentrated on his dinner. When he couldn’t make himself eat another bite, he strode across the sandbar to wash his hands and face in the stream. He stood in the darkness between ship and firelight, measuring the distant stars.

Five years and four months in this soggy wilderness, give or take a few weeks, and the absence of the wandering fire stretching across the night sky still felt strange. He missed its undulating beauty, the subtle feeling of its power weaving through the world.

The temptation to taste the magic of this foreign land, to let it flow through him and become something new - it never left him. No matter how tightly he bound his magic under chains of will and fury, the yearning never diminished. He wondered if he would have been able to bear it at all, if he could still see the wandering fire weaving through the night.

A wild part of him wondered if Nabooru ever looked for him at the observatory cave. If she found his failed potions, his stolen books, the few provisions he’d left behind. What she believed of him, of his soul, of his strength in this time. If she knew or guessed what he truly was. If she went to the Temple to seek the Moon’s Fist after he vanished. If she waited for his return. If she ever wondered after his fate. If she ever left her rest to watch the stars and the wandering fire through the ancient glass eye as he once did.

If in fact the wandering fire still appeared.

Gan shoved down the thought, returning to the gentle mumbling red-orange warmth of the dying fire. Link still sat in silent half-lotus at the edge of the rug, his blue eyes fixed somewhere beyond the embers. Gan folded himself down beside him, scrunching down a little so their shoulders met. He wondered if Link would ever get taller, or if using the blue time magic fixed his body forever in the shape he held when he first used it.

“It won’t rain tonight,” said Gan at last. No matter how he tried, or how well he resisted reaching for them, he still couldn’t stop _feeling_ the currents of forbidden magic moving around him. “Let’s just stay out here. The breeze is nice.”

Link shrugged. “Probably be easier to haul the boat back up in the morning.”

“Setting the winch hook and grapple is a little tricky in the dark,” agreed Gan. “I was just thinking it’s been a while since it was warm enough and dry enough to sleep in the open.”

“I’ll get cushions,” said Link, bracing himself to stand.

Gan stopped him with a hand on his back. “No need. It’s fine like this.”

Link looked up at him, frowning. “I actually _wasn’t_ trying to sneak a drink if that’s what you mean.”

“I know,” said Gan, draping his arm over Link’s shoulders. “It’s just - today was a good day, and I guess I’m not done with it yet. Our best flight so far too.”

“I - can hunt some more octo tomorrow. But I don’t think the flying boat is ever going to work,” said Link with a worried look.

“Probably not,” agreed Gan. “Fun though.”

Link blinked up at him. “Even though it’s more of a falling boat?”

“No, a falling boat is if we made all the balloons pop at once,” said Gan with his best teacher-voice. “This design was more of a _splashing_ boat.”

Link snorted. “Sometimes I wonder if you should have been born a cat, acting like you meant it to happen that way all along.”

“You can’t prove I didn’t,” teased Gan.


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T - 8

The windless summer heat laid so heavy over the marsh Link imagined he could  _ see _ the clinging stink of the dye vats. Over the last few years they’d packed a dozen crates each with onionskins and dried beet stalks and bluebean leaves and salvaged pots of precious powdered dyestuff, and finally Gan declared his recipes ready to test on grand scale.

Link always arranged for barrels of wool and linen cloth to drift into the marsh, but Gan continued tinkering with his looms anyway. So he planted crates of washed fleece wherever he found traces of lizal incursions, and hid braids of combed wool in one or another pile of old stuff in the hold. He dragged chests of plain yarn through the river of time, a little surprised how much he’d spun for nothing more than idle make-work, once he saw it all piled in the same place.

Gan sorted the yarn according to an order known only to him, and now the better half of it stewed in one or another noxious potion. Link wasn’t sure he wanted to repeat such a fragrant or messy process ever again - but he wasn’t sure sabotaging the batch would deter Gan at all. At least he’d agreed to set up the dye vats on a different island.

Even so, Link arranged stolen incense in every room belowdecks and tried to have as little to do with the process as possible. Which unfortunately meant getting talked into hammering gold wire into flat strips while Gan argued with the grammar of some old textbook and scribbled notes into a wax tablet. He hadn’t bothered sharing what the wire was for, but when did Gan ever explain himself?

Link tried to be glad of Gan’s innocent hobbies. He understood the need to always to be busy - and now he had every possible evidence that Gan’s most essential nature drove him to master the world around him. Whatever tools he had or hadn’t, whether he embraced or denied his magic, his golden eyes sought after the very levers and switches by which the world moved. He needed to know the how and the why underneath things other people took for granted. 

But Link knew too well how small the step between knowing and using.

He  _ really _ shouldn’t have overlooked the bookshelf in the old wheelhouse. Or the broken desk in the ancient captain’s cabin.

Link unwound another length of gold wire, passing it through the candleflame. He tried not to wonder too hard what Gan wanted with four hundred feet of flattened wire and two thousand glass beads smaller than grains of sweet rice.

He should never have established a tradition of gifts from the ‘warrior spirit’ on summer solstice, either. At first it was enough to bring food from his homeland. Ready-made clothes to replace things worn or outgrown. Beads. Toys. Sweets.

Now, for the second year in a row, Gan went in secret to the fairy’s shrine and begged her to send the spirit with more books. He made offerings of beautiful calligraphy on smooth stones and strips of bright cloth, bottles of preserved food and salvaged treasures. None of it convinced the fairy that Gan belonged to the Light this time. She still saw only the stain of his fate, his potential for corruption.

So Link took the secret offerings away, and tucked them into the lost grotto with all the rest of the things he dared not let Gan discover in this life.

Last year, he just bought a whole chest of old books from Ensren without really reading the titles. Somehow he’d expected them to be mundane - children’s wondertales, husbandry guides, carpentry plans, memoirs of this or that farmer, diseases of cucco. 

Some of them were. 

He merely realized far too late that Ensren’s interest in obscure languages and machines and occult wisdom in the other times hadn’t actually been Gan’s fault at all. Apparently.

This year, Gan had taken one of the dusty lexicons to the shrine. The fairy said he promised a hundred diamonds and a thousand engravings of the warrior spirit’s true name if he would bring a chest full of books about the script mentioned in the fourth chapter, and the people who produced it. Link argued with his better judgment, and drank, and argued some more. But in the end, he took that book back to Ensren, along with a priceless bottle of Tears, and asked for help.

Ensren asked very few questions, but every one felt like a red-hot blade. He promised nothing - but he confirmed the oath Gan swore to be a grave one. For a handful of  _ books _ .

How could he deny Gan a small happiness he craved so badly?

So he gave Ensren a little casket of golden rupees hidden under a layer of red, begged him to exclude any about magic, and bought all the applejack Corfo could be persuaded to sell. 

And now he hammered gold wire while Gan devoured his birthday presents. 

Around the fourth hour, Gan swore, throwing his reed stylus down and slamming the book shut. He spat curses at it and stormed out, ignoring Link’s half-voiced questions. He grumbled his way down the hall, banging cabinets in the kitchen. Link finished hammering the length he’d softened and tried to persuade himself it didn’t mean anything. Gan always went into new things expecting to conquer them easily. Better he vent his frustration at pots and pans than - other things.

To his surprise, Gan returned in short order to thump down a tray of honeycakes and cold cider and sugar-roasted nuts and one of his own jugs of applejack. Gan dragged a cushion over, balancing a narrow sourwood frame across his lap. He set a fat bobbin of silk buttonhole twist on the table and poured mixed cups of cider for both of them - the balance nearly inverse for each.

“Don’t look so sour,” said Gan, gesturing with his cup of mostly-cider. “This isn’t any stronger than majir.”

Link pulled a face, stirring the surface of his mostly-applejack with a fingertip. “That doesn’t make it good for you.”

Gan made a rude noise. “I’m just as old as you pretend to be and  _ I _ have no intention of ruining my appetite with it. Anyways it’s my birthday month  _ and _ I have a headache from staring at that amazingly awful spelling all day. So there.”

“First it was a day, then a week, now you will claim a whole  _ month _ of special rules?” Link rolled his eyes, setting aside his work. “And cake isn’t exactly practical food.”

“Admit it, doing things my way  _ is _ more fun,” said Gan airily, eating a wedge of honeycake with his fingers. 

Link groaned and lifted his cup.

“Anyways, small work like this is easier if you can’t think about it too much. It’ll be worth it though,” said Gan, licking his fingers clean. “Don’t give me that look - anyone who can forget they’ve spun that much warp yarn  _ has _ to understand that.”

“Not like I made it all yesterday or anything,” said Link, ashamed of the heat rising in his face as the memory of the first spinning lesson roared into his mind. “I didn’t mean to make it  _ for _ anything in particular either. It’s just something a friend taught me, long ago.”

“Hn,” said Gan, setting aside his cup and tying the button twist onto one side of the frame. “You miss them a lot, don’t you?”

“Yes and no,” said Link, leaning back against the cool metal wall. “I miss a thing that never really was. It’s stupid.”

Gan shrugged, winding four times around the wood and deftly cinching another tidy knot in line with the first. “It existed for  _ you _ . That still counts, even if the blue magic unraveled it after. This whole ship will unravel at once if you hit the bluestone orb again. That won’t make six years unhappen, you know?”

Link winced, wondering if Gan was reading his dreams again. “It’s worse than that. We could never have  _ been _ friends for even one winter if either of us knew the whole truth at the beginning.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Gan, not looking up from his strange project. “You haven’t figured out what we’re building yet, have you?”

Link shrugged and sipped his applejack. “A machine of some sort?”

“Well  _ obviously _ ,” said Gan, rolling his eyes


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T - 7

In the fourth hour after nadir on the longest night of the seventh year, a brazen owl roosted on the gunwale directly above the bedroom and made a nuisance of itself. Gan already lay awake as usual, but the noise made it hard to think clearly, and that annoyed him. 

He would try to rest, but most nights he couldn’t stop himself from thinking long enough to actually fall asleep unless he was exhausted. He would doze off for an hour or two only to awake for small and stupid sounds that may never have even happened outside his own head - footsteps or clicking beads or shimmering bells or scraping steel or imagined voices. It was usually easier to block that out in the winter, with Link beside him and the fire murmuring in the stove. 

Link worried that he ruined Gan’s sleep with his nightmares, but the truth was they  _ both _ slept more easily when they shared blankets for warmth. The  _ really _ bad nights mostly happened in the warmer months, when they went back to separate rooms. Even if Link did start to thrash or babble, most of the time a few words and a gentle touch was enough to guide him out of it and back to sleep. Those little victories helped quiet his own mind, and even the simple task of bringing Link back to the now from one of the bad nights gave him another tiny sip of  _ purpose _ .

Gan didn’t like the silence much - stupid small noises seemed so much louder then. Memories and failures too often came to gnaw at him when he was alone without some work, some puzzle to occupy him. Half the time when he startled out of sleep at Link’s side it was for the same reason he lay awake now: because Link was  _ too _ quiet. He hadn’t even twitched when the owl began its tirade.

Seven years, and he felt the same hollow tension every time he had to reach across the darkness to find out if his friend still breathed.

It didn’t help that Link’s pale skin was always weirdly cool. Gan held his own breath and closed his ears to the furious owl, pressing his hand flat to Link’s thin chest, and still couldn’t be certain. He sought the tender pulse-points at the base of Link’s throat, but he couldn’t swear beyond all doubt it wasn’t his own heartbeat in his fingers betraying him. Chaos pricked at the inside of his skin as he pulled himself closer, lowering his ear against that too-still chest and still Link did not stir. 

But he breathed. 

Gan exhaled slowly, silently. The chaos sank away into nothing. For now.

Which of course meant his stomach rumbled. Gan swore at it, but it only growled again. Outside, the owl cursed the world. A part of his mind suggested the shrill featherhead might somehow be kin to his irreverent guts, and it too was furious about being hungry at all hours. 

Link said it was only because he was growing so much this year, and he was probably right. The year before the warrior spirit came for him, Nabs had been the same way. But warriors ate better than anyone except the council and the Rocs. Even the fortress guard had to wait for the Saiev to eat their fill.

What would he have eaten, as a demon prince?

Gan shook off the thought and slipped out from under the blankets. He took a moment by the fire to stuff his feet in his sheepskin indoor boots and shrug into his plain lopsided caftan. The twill weave had smoothed out some of the irregularities in the yarn, but each narrow panel had come out a slightly different size. Link finally stirred when he added another log to the fire, rolling onto his side and mumbling something about wolves. Gan watched him drag his fingers over one pale cheek with a deep frown, and drop right back into oblivion.

The owl’s fury followed him down the frigid corridor to the kitchen. He shoved food in his face until his stomach shut up without bothering to pay attention to what he was eating, washing it down with a few cups of warm cider. He wiped down the table and stacked empty bottles in the washing trough, and  _ still _ the owl screamed at the darkness.

Rather than return to bed to stare at the shadows and wish a swift end on the damn bird, Gan retreated to his workroom and dug out his trunk of ancient ship’s books. He’d found them while Link was hunting, years ago, and forgotten to mention them.

He hadn’t really  _ meant _ to keep them secret. Link had been with him when they found the map books, and the one that looked like a ledger of some kind in the long drawer of the ancient desk in the biggest cabin. He couldn’t read the small volumes any more than the large, so he’d packed them safely in a better chest in his workroom and forgot about them until the day he saw the same script in one of the books the warrior spirit left for him. 

Even then, it took a year to figure out how to use a single known inscription to transcribe a handful of signs from the ancient angular script to the Old High Hylian syllabary. Months later, Gan realized the structure actually transliterated more easily to his native tongue. He picked the book with the most drawings inside, and spent hundreds of sleepless nights filling an half a quarto journal with the resulting manuscript. He left all the facing pages blank in hopes of managing an actual translation later.

So far he’d learned maybe a thousand words. On a few pages he’d managed to translate whole sentences, usually about terribly mundane things that told him almost nothing about the ancient author except that they collected bugs, prayed a lot, and didn’t much like fish.

He opened his quarto journal where he’d left off last time, and settled in to comb through the text for anything else he  _ could _ translate. If he ever managed to untangle even one full journal,  _ then _ he could show these to Link. He needed to know what they meant first. Whether the books belonged to the days before the ship ran aground, or someone who found the rusty hulk long after.

Gan tended to lean toward the first theory. The ancient letters bore enough resemblance to the scattered inscriptions on the ship itself that at least the book and ship seemed to be closer in age than the book was to Old High Hylian. Fascinating - and frustrating. He no longer doubted the ship’s books were written in some early form of Hylian, or at least one of its ancestors. If only he could decipher it-!

Gan sat back from his work, rubbing his cold hands together and debating lighting the stove in here too. He hoped the books would someday tell him more about the ship than the bugs who landed on it.  _ Then _ he could show Link. Maybe he would be happy if he knew for certain the last captain of this ship had also manipulated the rivers of time. Maybe there would even be something that explained what the enchanted bluestone actually  _ was _ , where it came from, why the warrior spirit said its powers belonged to the Light.

Not that he had any real evidence to the contrary. And so far the particular, greedy voice in his mothers’ blue demonstone hadn’t found him here. But was that enough to call it  _ good _ ? When had the blue magic ever protected Link, who not only lived in it but served it?

_ —— 15, —— of Our Lady of Light 75 _

_ Had the dream again. ——  _ _ was _ _ nearly done —— the new ——. Pray —— won’t notice and Hylia forgive my ——. Need to fly back to the Sacred —— alone. —— said her power would —— him, but that’s been said before, and —— before. And this time - Zelda isn’t going to come back _ .  _ Pray it’s only a dream. _


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T - 6

Another crisp autumn morning, another nest of lizal to eliminate. Every year, more monsters sniffing around the edges of the swampland. They shouldn’t be able to cross the boundary of the ship’s orb, but Link didn’t want them getting close enough to test that. 

He could almost pity the savage creatures. They could probably smell the orb’s active magic on the wind, and their very nature demanded they hunt the source. They didn’t choose to be that way. The more intelligent, demon-bound ones might even know or suspect they would find their king in this place, all because  _ he _ was too soft to make Gan stay within the orb’s field at all times. 

Eight years was a long time to live in the confines of the ancient shipwreck, howsoever well appointed it might be now. The forest spirit village that raised  _ him _ wasn’t any bigger, but that was one grove out of the whole forest, and everywhere under the Green had been his playground. He knew from the day he could walk that dangers lurked in the deep forest, but until the guardian tree fell sick, he never saw anything worse than a mischievous skullkid or carnivorous weeds or an annoyed deku or a scurry of clinging morth.

Monsters were supposed to  _ avoid _ the Light unless they were being forced to attack it by a demon strong enough to compel them against their nature. Constant incursions like this - something Dark was luring them here. 

“Hey short stuff,” said Gan, snapping his fingers inches from his nose. “You didn’t hear a thing I said, did you?”

“I was listening. Incendiary arrows, rock flinger on the boat,” said Link, scrubbing a hand over his face and dragging his wandering thoughts back into order.

“That was five minutes ago and what I  _ said _ was: I want to  _ replace _ the rock flinger,” groaned Gan. He rocked back on his bench, making the wood creak worrisomely. He’d started to regain a little bulk, his shoulders too wide and biceps too thick for any of his sleeved tunics again. And he still had a few seasons yet to reach his full height.

“You don’t eat enough,” blurted Link.

“I eat plenty. Don’t change the subject,” said Gan, thumping his elbows on the table as he leaned forward again, indifferent to the distress of the innocent furniture. “We need to test the cannon, learn its range, its speed. But with two lizal nests and a sounder of blin within a day of us, they  _ will _ hear it. One blast might not be enough for them to find our position, but we need at least eight test shots before we can use it in battle.”

“So we don’t use it this time. That’s fine,” said Link with a shrug. “I’ve kinda done this before. It’ll be fine. You stay on the boat with the bow, and I’ll go in to clear each camp. And no, you  _ don’t _ eat properly, or you wouldn’t be this skinny.”

“I’m a foot and a half taller than I was last winter, what do you expect? Was I fourteen when you saw me in the before? Then shut up about shit you don’t know and focus on the plan,” snapped Gan, narrowing his intense golden eyes.

“Why do we need some elaborate  _ plan _ ? It’s just lizal,” said Link, pouring a little more applejack in his cup.

“That kind of attitude will get you killed, and then where will we be? Never underestimate your enemy,” said Gan, jabbing his finger against the map he’d spread over the table. “And it’s a mixed raidgroup this time. Lizal don’t make allies outside their kind without damn good reason, and  _ moblin _ aren’t swamp creatures. They can’t swim, and the damp will rot their hooves.”

“That doesn’t make sense. There’s wild cattle living in the marsh and they do fine,” said Link, hoping the applejack would disguise how badly this talk unsettled him. He should never have allowed Gan to join him on any patrols ever. His enthusiasm - and talent - for violence should never have been given the opportunity to surface. 

“Well if they’re anything like the drawings in - I mean, when I was little I read a lot about animals, you know? They probably have different hooves than blin, or they’re immune to the rot or something. Stop trying to distract me,” said Gan.

“Sorry,” said Link, cheeks burning.

“The point is,” said Gan, lacing his fingers together. “We  _ need _ to test the cannon if we’re going to take out this many without having to retreat here and throw off a siege. So you  _ have _ to do the test firing in a way they  _ can’t _ hear. Do you understand?”

“Not really,” said Link, but he didn’t like the implication at all. If he was using the ranged weapon, what would  _ Gan _ be doing?

“I mean, you have to use the flute. No - listen first. Remember the day we met, in the snow? Freeze the world just like that, and fire the cannon at the targets I’ve built, until you get a feel for the range, the arc, the time. Wait after the last shot, or move into position  _ here _ , and start time again. They’ll either never hear at all, or the explosions will all seem to go off at once,” said Gan. “I’ll be in the hide boat flanking this camp, watching for the smoke. I’ll hit them with my incendiaries from behind when they turn about to investigate.”

Link frowned. “I don’t like this plan.”

“Don’t be stubborn. It’s just a pincer variant,” said Gan with a dismissive gesture. He moved tokens around the map without looking down at them as he continued. “The other camps will see me as the immediate threat, and you can pick off at least half a dozen while they’re advancing on me.”

“That’s even worse. I don’t want you that close to the monsters  _ or _ the blasts,” said Link. 

“You never want me doing  _ anything _ \- but there’s no way you can take down this many alone before they can summon reinforcements from their main nests or whatever. You will follow  _ my _ plan this time - it is the only way we can leverage an acceptable degree of force to defeat them. You don’t have a choice,” said Gan coldly. 

“There’s  _ always _ another way,” said Link, his heart twisting in his sorry chest. “There is always a choice.”

“If you hadn’t delayed the cannon tests we wouldn’t  _ be _ in this position,” said Gan, thumping his palm on the table so hard their cups rattled and threatened to splash. “Using that damn flute at all is bad enough but so help me - if I get out there and I see the smallest sign you’ve gone behind my back to execute them while they’re frozen-”

“Or else  _ what _ ?” Link growled pushing back from the table. “Jealous I’ll steal your share of the bloodletting?”

“You want demons coming out here? Because that’s how you get demons,” Gan shouted back. “Evil calls to evil, and stopping time so you can outright murder two dozen sentient creatures who can’t sense you, can’t fight you, can’t escape you-”

“And how is a cannon any different? How is destroying them with twenty pounds of powdered bombflower from fifty yards away any  _ less _ evil than-”

“It’s  _ completely _ different,” shouted Gan. “Maybe you haven’t bothered to study nonhumans but  _ I have _ . We are outnumbered at least three to one and outweighed by twice that if the only weapons in play were  _ blades _ . Which they aren’t. They have the same capacity to use advanced weaponry as us.”

“So I should just let them come then,” said Link, sick to his stomach. “Let them poison the water and tear up the grazing islands and eat all the fish and fowl for twenty miles, because they  _ might _ have bombs? Let you walk your ass into their line of sight alone, or else  _ I’m _ the bad guy?”

“You deliberately misunderstand, as always. Stupid, short-sighted Hylian - I have no hesitation whatsoever leveraging the force necessary to defend our home,” said Gan, pushing to his feet even as he dropped his voice. “That godsforgotten bluestone flute is another thing entirely, stripping all choice and even chance from your victims. Using that  _ thing _ as a weapon isn’t defense, it’s murder.”

“Since when are  _ you _ concerned about moral-” began Link.

“Since forever,” cut in Gan, clenching his hands into fists. “And if you don’t understand that? Then you don’t know me at all.”

Link stared up at him, completely at a loss. He was so tall already, and his voice had begun to deepen too. His long red hair still hung loose, damp from the bath. The warm glow of the amber light crystals shimmered through his curls, and for a moment Link could see the image of the flamboyant Evil King overlaying the gaunt, angry teenager before him.

“I know enough to know this is a dangerous path for you,” murmured Link.

“Every path is dangerous,” said Gan coldly. “It is still my choice to make.”


	29. Chapter 29

Lightning shattered the silent darkness, churning the shadow roads into jagged gray shards to arm the monstrous gloopy terrors that inhabited this nowhereland.

Ganondorf ignored them, and ran  _ faster _ .

Where the shipwreck should have been, the twilight held only a vast sucking nothingness wrapped in a sphere of searing blue-white script that moved too quickly to read. He couldn’t remember how the ship lay without the sandbar for reference, without sun or moon or stars, only the undulating nothing shadowfog. 

If he miscalculated - if he dropped back into the world in the wrong place - if he fell into the stream or the pond instead of hitting sand? Link would surely die.

Ganondorf roared at the gloop-beasts and circled the voidsphere again, looking for something he could use, the slightest crack joining the two worlds. Anything to anchor himself in the world of the living. 

“It’s ok,” whispered Link, but his words came out wet and hollow. 

“Don’t be stupid,” growled Ganondorf, circling again, his eyes fixed opposite the sphere. The fairy shrine touched both worlds. If he could just get line of sight on those silver trees, he could find a safe place to cross over.

Link reached up to touch his face, babbling some nonsense words. His blood stung like yellow chu jelly. 

Ganondorf stood between the void and the grove, clutching his dying friend to his chest. He could see the shrine. He could reach it. But would the warrior spirit come in time? Was healing even among his powers?

“No,” said Ganondorf to the darkness, turning towards the ship. “Who saves one at the cost of a hundred thousand million others?”

He stepped through the shadows and into the world, pulling thin satisfaction from the crunch of saltgrass under his feet. Stormclouds boiled overhead, sparking red-purple and blue-white and yellow-green in their violent depths. The wind raced past him, smelling of salt.

Ganondorf trudged across the sandbar, lightning dancing along beside him. He spat a command, and three lightnings dashed away to lower the cargo net for him. Graceless, but effective. He shifted his grip on Link so he could brace himself against the chains while he concentrated on triggering the net’s counterweights with the lightnings.

It took far longer to reach the upper deck than he’d hoped, but at least they were safely within the protection of the orb. Link kept trying to wriggle free of his hold and ramble on about  _ something _ \- Ganondorf ignored him, striding across the deck as swiftly as he dared. He spared a corner of his attention on a dusty cantrip, summoning a pile of blankets from the bedroom below and dropping them in a heap at the foot of the orb pedestal.

“Amazing,” slurred Link, trying to touch his face again, and missing his mark by an enormous measure. “Did amazing Jojo.”

“Hn,” grunted Ganondorf, kneeling beside the blankets and carefully untangling himself from his wounded friend. The damage was incredible in all the worst ways. Everything had happened so fast - and there was so much blood. Even now.

The lightning though - he’d never imagined it would crawl inside his victims like this. Nine years he’d kept his magic under perfect control only to slip  _ now _ . The battle had already turned against them, but the exact moment his equanimity failed him kept playing over and over in his mind. 

Gan fired a freezestone arrow at the chief moblin. 

He missed. 

The moblin thrust his spear clear through Link’s gut. 

A scaly swamp beast lurched into the middle of it all, surprising them both. 

Gan loosed an arrow into its face, to no effect whatever - and Link! The damned fool hacked through the spear shaft impaling him and charged the new beast - which opened its toothy maw to pour out a hundred smaller ravening horrors. 

If he lived a thousand years he would never forget how his enemies died, lightning arcing from one to the next, exploding from eyes and mouths and claws in a terrible red fog. Gan felt certain every spirit and demon and mage in the world must have felt the crashing surge of his evil magic.

“You  _ crying _ -?” Link’s thin voice cracked and bubbled, and he hooked his broken fingers in Gan’s coarse woven shirt.

“Shut up,” said Gan, smoothing Link’s golden hair out of his face. “Put your hand on the pedestal - feel the pulse of the blue magic it holds, ok? Count the beats. Don’t think about anything else - and  _ stop moving _ .”

“But you - the  _ magic _ -” began Link, trying vainly to sit up.

“Lay still,” said Gan, weaving a tiny measure of the compulsion into his words. Another sin to add to his pyre. But surely it was forgivable if he was only trying to keep someone from hurting themselves? “Concentrate, and count. I’m going to get something, and when I come back I need to know how many beats it’s been, ok? I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“ _ No-! _ ” Link cried, clutching at him with desperate strength. Too much, for how badly he was wounded. “Not again - never again - oh please don’t - the shadows  _ lie _ Jojo. Can’t bear it - not again - stay. Please.”

Gan frowned, thoughts scrambled.  “I’ll just be a minute. I’m not going far.”

“Said that before.  _ Lied _ before,” sobbed Link. “Sorry about the horse? Only time you ever were sorry for anything and you think I worried about a damn  _ horse _ ? Why Jojo?”

Gan rocked back on his heels, letting Link claw and beg for a moment. Maybe Link wasn’t babbling complete nonsense after all. But how could he have learned the baby-name Nabs used when he was very small? From the few hints he had to work with, he’d been much older than Link in the before, and Link clearly hadn’t been in Nab’s confidence either. In this time, he’d never even told Link his deadname. 

“I’m not going far,” Gan repeated. “Promise. Just need to get some things from below. Ok? Let go, hold the pillar instead. Count the beats - out loud where I can hear you, ok?”

Link sobbed something about blood and shadows again. It took a few more minutes of coaxing, but Gan finally persuaded him to count. He waited for five beats, making stupid little soothing noises like he was talking to a nervous horse.

Gan pulled away reluctantly, ignoring the complaints of the goats and cucco as he threw open the hatch. He didn’t want to be far from the orb either, if he was honest with himself. The timeshift stones held immense power, but it stood to reason the influence of any single stone must diminish with distance. 

Staying within arm’s reach of the orb was their absolute best chance for riding out the storm he’d unleashed. If the twilight couldn’t even see past the boundary of the magic, demons probably couldn’t cross it. 

“ _ Probably _ . Every minute you’ve been free of _him_ is a gift from the Warrior, and you piss it away because  _ one _ stupid battle goes sour? You’ve always been an evil little shit but this is just  _ pathetic _ ,” he growled in disgust, hauling open the door to one of the treasure rooms. He’d tried to organize them many times, but Link didn’t seem to have the first idea of what order  _ meant _ . It likely counted as a minor miracle that Link knew to keep food cold to prevent it spoiling.

Gan found the potions he wanted and climbed the stairs two at a time. He wasn’t surprised Link had stopped counting. At least the raspy sobbing said he was still alive. For now. 

No thanks to him.

Ganondorf knelt beside Link, too furious to speak. He cut the ruined boots and clothing away, pulling shreds of dirty cloth and slivers of gnawed leather out of Link’s lightning-filled wounds. He poured half a bottle of priceless blue potion into Link’s flesh, and tried to make him drink the rest, but  _ that _ he fought.

“Look you idiot, I can’t change whatever happened in the before, ok? But we’re in  _ this _ time now,” said Gan, gripping Link’s shoulder hard. “In this time, you are  _ bleeding _ and you need to eat your damn fool pride and just take your damn medicine.”

“No - make me sleep so you can run away again? Won’t do it,” said Link through clenched teeth.

“I’m not  _ going _ anywhere, or not any further than the cold room for food. Promise,” he groaned, trying to tip the viscous potion past Link’s lips again. “Even half is better than none - stop being so stubborn.”

Link shook his head, trying to wriggle free again. Gan pressed him back against the orb pillar and tried again to no effect.

“You won’t believe me? Fine - believe in  _ that _ ,” he said, gesturing at the orb with the potion bottle. “This piece of timeshifting bluestone is the very Orb of Light I came here to find eight years ago. Now that stupid  _ rock _ is the only shield I have left between me and the demon my mothers promised me to. If I leave it now, everything will come to ruin. Do you understand?  _ That’s not what I want _ .”

“Then  _ why _ ,” cried Link. “Why did you embrace the shadows?”

“Because I was  _ trying _ to save your stupid ass,” shouted Gan. He could feel the magic trying to boil up through him, winding itself into his fury with empty promises of release. “If you want to lay here and bleed to death instead of taking a healing drought from the hands of the mortal host of Ganon,  _ fine _ . I will be right goddamn here to curse your  _ stupid _ choice even as it kills you, because the only way I’m moving from this spot is if you make me. So good fucking luck, little hero.”

Link’s wide blue eyes reflected the faint glow of the orb, pinned in panic and pain in spite of the failing twilight. He stammered and reached out with his fumbling bloody fingers, sizzling tiny lightnings arcing from his fingertips to sting Gan’s hand.

Gan rocked back on his heels, scrubbing his free hand over his face. “Just take the damn potion. I don’t know if it will even work at this point, but at least let me  _ try _ to fix what I’ve done, ok?”

“Oh Jojo - it’s ok. Didn’t do anything wrong,” babbled Link, patting his knee. “Accidents. Not hurt. Gonna be fine. With you, always.”

Gan choked on his frustration, holding the bottle and its viscous brew to Link’s lips again. This time, he didn’t fight it. Whatever dream held him, at least it finally persuaded him to cooperate. 


	30. Chapter 30

Rain pattered against the sailcloth canopy, whispering down the slopes and valleys to spill onto the deck below. Link watched it splash, wondering vaguely when Gan dragged him onto the rag-woven cot. He lay swaddled in blankets, and he dared not move too much lest Gan notice and make him swallow another bitter potion. But he  _ itched _ .

Link shifted carefully, brushing his hand over the crackling, lingering sting that draped his entire right side, and probed experimentally at the unsettling tingly squish in his stomach. Sticky, weirdly sharp zapping shocks bit at his fingers. Nausea and thirst fought for primacy as he stared out at the dreary afternoon. Distant thunder muttered to itself, and dim blue-white-gold lightning flickered in the depths of the heavy clouds.

Link hadn’t seen the sun or stars since the battle. Every time he surfaced from his medicated haze, it was to storms exactly like this. He knew days passed mostly because Gan told him, and because of the cucco. The goats remained in their pen, but the featherbutts wandered anytime it wasn’t raining, and tried to roost in or on or near the canvas shelter when it did.  _ They _ knew the rhythm of day and night whether they could see it or not.

One of the speckled hens lost a shoving match, fluttering down from the crossbrace and hopping up on the cot beside him. The blue hen on the rail pecked at her, and she squealed in offense, flapping madly through the short jump to the other side of his hip.

Behind him, Gan grunted, and the speckled cucco rwarked back. Link closed his eyes and lay as still as he could manage. The cot did slope back in the middle, so Gan was probably still sitting lotus style against the pillar, like the last time he woke. The hen waddled about, clicking and squeaking questions at her lazy keepers. Gan yawned a curse, joints crackling and the cot creaking as he stretched. The speckled cucco battered the damp air to launch herself upward again - probably to perch on Gan’s shoulder. She liked people more than the others, and seemed especially fond of preening Gan’s hair when it was wet. 

“Damn bird,” groaned Gan, even as he clicked back at her and scurfled her neck feathers. “Almost had the riddle solved and you have to wake me up?”

The cucco rwrrred at him.

“Look, there’s plenty of room on the roost bars for all of you if you’d just go  _ inside _ the coop instead of trying to sleep on top of it. Idiot,” grumbled Gan.

The cucco clucked and chirrred in contentment. 

“At least sit  _ still _ . Or tell me something useful for once,” said Gan. “How about starting with where to find more powdered bluebeetle shells? Or a secret stash of dried truffles and pickled heartradish? No? Just going to eat my hair and fluff your feathers at me? Shameless fluffbutt. Try not to lay your eggs off a ledge tomorrow ok? Teaches the girls bad habits.”

“You’re so gentle with them,” murmured Link, embarrassed at the wobbly rasp in his voice. “One day you launch a murderous rampage, and the next you’re cuddling a spoiled hen.”

“Hn,” said Gan, scritching the purring cucco on his shoulder. “Good morning to you too, ingrate. Hungry?”

Link shrugged, opening his eyes. Gan looked awful, his face gaunt and shadowed, his shirt stained and torn. “In the west treasure room, in the little wood box I have vials of green-”

“I have no interest whatsoever in feeding that beast,” cut in Gan, folding his arms across his chest. “If on the other hand you will confess the location of another stash of  _ blue _ or even  _ red _ potion, I might  _ consider _ opening a bottle of sugared wildberries for you.”

“Just because you drained your magic with that blast doesn’t mean you need to bear a four-day headache,” countered Link. 

Gan scoffed, provoking a worried chirr from the spotted cucco. “You think  _ this _ is drained? You’re more mageblind than I thought.”

Link swallowed hard, wondering if he could drink water without it stinging him yet. “You look terrible.”

“Pot, kettle.” Gan said.

“I’ve too many holes for a pot,” said Link with a wry grin.

Gan snarled at him. “How can you make  _ jokes _ when I almost killed you out there?”

“Eh,” Link said with a shrug. “Wasn’t the first time y- that is, I’ve had worse. It’s nothing,”

“Don’t be stupid. I don’t know how you can even be  _ talking _ when you lost your hand and half a leg to that swamp monster. For the love of Light, you have a gaping  _ hole _ in your gut big enough I could put my fist in if your blood wasn’t full of skyfire, but this is categorically  _ not  _ nothing _ , _ ” shouted Gan, startling the speckled cucco, who shrieked and fled back to her nestmates. “I’ve ripped all the treasure rooms apart already looking for supplies.  _ Is there more blue potion? _ ”

Link tried to untangle himself from the blanket, then realized it probably wasn’t nice to make Gan have to look at his wounds. So he gave up, and lay back down. “How many bottles have you used?” 

“Four,” said Gan. “Twice that of red.”

“Then no, not here,” said Link, shaking his head. “I never thought we’d need-”

“Well you thought  _ wrong _ ,” snapped Gan. “Where’s the flute?”

“Away,” said Link.

“This isn’t a game. Tell me where you hid the goddamn flute,” growled Gan. “Or else.”

Link made a rude noise, though he too began to wonder why he was still alive in this time. The only fairy on the ship lived under the floor of the ancient captain’s cabin, and she didn’t like helping humans much. Something about a broken promise, long ago. Usually a mortal wound without a helpful fairy around would send him back to the temple complex in Castletown, to the day Zelda locked him out of the tomorrow after the tower. Why not this time? Was the orb-field stopping the magic that made him go back? But what was keeping him alive?

“Link. You  _ have _ to tell me,” said Gan, his golden eyes almost glowing in the shadows of the makeshift rain shelter. “You promised me the truth in this time.”

“Why do you even care? You can’t dance the river on your own,” said Link. 

“No, but you can teach me the song that sends you back upriver, and you’ll listen to me about the cannon next time,” said Gan. 

“I won’t go back for something this small,” said Link.

Gan gestured helplessly, his voice cracking in the way that always made him furious. “ _ Small _ ? The fuck is wrong with you?”

“Ok, fine. It  _ was _ a really big blast,” conceded Link. “I’ve never seen you do anything quite like that before.”

“And how many  _ befores _ have you got inside that stupid blonde head of yours?” Gan demanded. “Did you wait until you were shaking hands with death every time? Or is this a new torment-”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Link, rolling over so he didn’t have to deal with the pain and fury in his golden eyes.

“Too fucking bad,” snapped Gan. “I already know you’ve seen the goddamn moon fall on the world. You ramble when you’re delirious. You call me by a name I’ve never told anyone. You demand explanations I can’t give you, and you refuse to believe there’s any difference between  _ me _ and  _ him _ . So. You can just get over yourself and tell me where you hid the stupid flute. It’s only  _ two hundred million _ possible combinations. I’ve held him off for eight years - what’s seven more?”

“You’d be stranded here,” said Link to the rain. “I can’t take you back with me.”

“I won’t be any  _ less _ alone after you die, idiot. So don’t pretend you’re being a jackass for my benefit,” said Gan.

Link winced. “It’s in the same place as the Tears. Touch the bottom of our fish pond, and you’ll see a hole at the bottom of the wall. Watch out for the jagged spot where it turns.  _ Don’t _ touch the gold puzzle box.”

Gan didn’t move or even say anything for a moment. The storm cracked open again with a shuddering boom, hurling tiny seed-hail along with the rain. The cucco screamed and shoved one another as they all tried to be in the middle of the flock.

“Don’t fall asleep while I’m gone,” he said at last. “Codebreaking is  _ annoying _ .”

“Give me your hand then. There’s a pattern of three I will teach you,” said Link. “If that doesn’t fix enough, the third, first, and one higher will-”

“I’ll open the river  _ first _ , thanks,” said Gan, crawling off the cot.

“I  _ won’t _ teach you that one,” said Link. “The second one invokes a different, terrible power. Try not to use it.”


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T - 5

Ganondorf opened a fresh bottle of King’s Tears, pouring the sharp spirits over a fistful of mint and crushed freezestone in a brass cup. He waited until the metal pinged thrice, and strained the Tears into the waiting glass of lemon juice and precious desert spices. He watched the vortex form around the spoon as he stirred in a fat measure of cane juice he’d secretly laced with powdered bluebeetle. He wasn’t sure the ancient shells would still hold any virtue, but at least it wouldn’t do any harm. He’d already tested the concoction on himself to make sure. 

Link glared at the glass when he set it on the table in easy reach. “That’s quite a bribe, desert prince.”

“Just eat your damn soup,” said Gan, straddling the opposite bench carefully. He wasn’t sure how much longer the repairs would hold up to his weight. If not for Link’s condition, he would have rather banished chairs completely and stitched them both big fat floor cushions.

“Heartradish isn’t going to grow me a new hand, no matter how many ways you cook it. Just let it go,” said Link.

“I’ll let it go when you teach me the song,” said Gan, crunching through a slice of pickled melon. It was a terrible batch, the vinegar musty and the spices too old, but at least the oak leaf trick from the ancient books worked to give the thing proper tooth.

“It’s not open for discussion. Bring back the ocarina from wherever you’ve hidden it. The magic will work better for me,” said Link, picking up his spoon.

“You can’t even play it properly anymore, so how about no,” said Gan, eating another slice of awful pickles. “The zapshroom omelettes aren’t making a difference, are they?”

Link grimaced. “About as much as the topaz did, except it itches inside.”

Gan blew a tight breath through his nose and wrestled with his rage. It wasn’t  _ fair _ , and he didn’t understand. The skyfire contamination shouldn’t be  _ possible _ . Not on a human. His mothers always called the lightmagic capricious and bloodthirsty, inferior as a weapon because like the wind it went where it pleased, spent itself, and was gone. It didn’t persist like ice, nor could it be fed like fire. 

Or at least - it shouldn’t. Not without some active spell calling it.

“How much do you know about magic, Link?”

“Enough. I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, leaning over his bowl to slurp at the cold heartradish stew.

“Too bad,” said Gan, sipping at his own spiced lemonade and wondering if tipping a little Tears in would help  _ him _ too. Except - how could they? The whole point of a King was to strengthen the  _ People _ . To transmute  _ their _ grief and pain into power. To nurture beauty and bring prosperity. To wield the shuttle and the blade, giving and taking life as the Pattern demands. To stand between and maintain balance between the Spirits and the ancestors and the living.

“Well? Out with it already,” grumped Link, setting aside the spoon so he could manage his glass. The broken bones in his left hand had more or less healed in the right arrangement, but he still struggled with tremors. 

Gan watched him for a moment, feeling a faint echo of the prickly crawling electric sting corrupting Link’s body. “There’s no such thing as an accident.”

“Gan. Don’t be like this,” groaned Link. “Stop trying to pretend it was your fault, ok?”

“I’m dead serious,” said Gan, picking at a splinter in the table. “Magic has rules. It doesn’t have a mind of its own any more than - oh, a rock. It can’t act without someone or something pushing it.”

“Things happen by themselves  _ all the time. _ Rocks fall off mountains, wildfires rip across fields, rivers flood. People blame the gods because people are awful, but that doesn’t make it true,” said Link.

Gan sighed, letting his eyes wander around the room. He would rather have gotten up to pace but that would only upset Link more. “That’s the thing. Both are incomplete truths. Chance is an illusion that people believe in because it gives them hope, and because it’s easier to understand and talk about than the true vastness of the Great Pattern. Everything happens for a reason, even if you can’t see it. A rock falls on someone’s house today because a beetle moved a grain of sand a thousand years ago.”

“The beetle isn’t responsible for what happened to the house,” said Link, setting his glass down with a determined thunk.

“My  _ point _ is the rock didn’t fall because it was the rock’s idea, and the  _ rock _ isn’t at fault for where it fell and what it did,” said Gan. “Magic follows the same rules.”

“You think about rules a lot,” said Link softly.

“Someone has to,” said Gan, avoiding his gaze. “I can’t change who I am. I’ve tried. That’s why I pushed for the cannon. What happened last autumn-”

“I  _ said _ I  _ don’t _ want to talk about it,” snapped Link, plopping his spoon back in his half-empty bowl.

“ _ You _ don’t have to. I do,” said Gan, looking at him sidelong. “I need you to  _ listen _ for once in your damn fool life. However many times you’ve gone upriver, whatever it is you’re looking for, you might as well give up if you won’t open your ears. On that day, I  _ called _ the skyfire down. I  _ wanted _ to shatter and destroy. I  _ needed _ my enemies to burn.”

“You panicked. It happens. It was an accident. Even heroes and kings stumble sometimes,” said Link. He reached across the table, and Gan could see the flicker of tiny lightnings trapped under his scarred flesh. “I don’t blame you for lashing out on instinct.”

“You should,” returned Gan. “I know you’d rather believe I lost control-”

“Stop,” said Link.

Gan did not stop. “I was in  _ perfect _ command of myself the entire time.  _ I am not a nice person. _ Do you understand? I saw you take a deadly hit. I saw we were going to lose. I made a  _ choice _ . And if money meant anything out here, I would wager everything the ‘accidents’ you saw around me in the befores weren’t any different.”

“Shut  _ up _ ,” shouted Link. “How  _ dare _ you pass judgment on my - goddamnit! Don’t tell me what I saw. We were  _ so close _ . It was  _ my _ mistake.  _ Mine _ . Not yours.”

“Don’t misunderstand me - I’m not insulting your strength or skill on the field,” said Gan, holding fast to discipline, letting Link’s fury slide past him. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. But I  _ absolutely _ wanted to hurt everything else. I chose to-”

“I’m  _ not _ giving up on you,” roared Link, slamming his fist on the table hard enough to rattle the dishes and spill his soup. His fierce blue eyes reflected only fury. “So you can just stop, you hear me?  _ Stop _ .”

Gan waited, watching a stray lightning crawl out of the sling Link wore now, for resting his shattered right arm in. It writhed up his thin chest and into the placket of his no-color shirt. When he counted four breaths between Link’s wordless growls, he released the tiny thread of magic warding the lemonade against mischance. “I am the last soul ever spun who would doubt your resolve.”

Link grunted like a surly wolfos interrupted from a nap.

“Tell me about one of the accidents,” said Gan softly, holding his gaze. “In detail. Everything you remember.”

“I can’t,” said Link, shaking his head and thumping back down on his little bench. 

“I know there must have been lots. Just pick one. Tell me about a time you feel absolutely certain my magic wasn’t under either my control or  _ his _ ,” said Gan softly. 

Link hesitated, fidgeting, and his eyes unfocused as his thoughts turned inward. “I don’t remember all of it. We were running - a game we played a thousand times. A race to see who could sprint from the gate to the Beedle wagon fastest. It was solstice, or - no, a little before. We all knew Lamis would win, and you and Roan would come in a close second, but Taedra was cheering for me. She is everything sweet and good, even when she pranks her sibs.”

Gan nodded, desperately curious about these strangers with foreign names. The way Link spoke, the strangers seemed to be children. Cherished friends. Almost - family. Link  _ never _ spoke of people fondly like that. He hated the outside world.

“They told me the mules were in a frenzy, walleyed and foaming,” said Link. “They bolted in the traces almost an hour down the road when the Beedle stepped down to take a piss. I never saw - the magic hit out of nowhere. They said there was a sudden glow like lightning inside a cloud, and I just dropped. The wagon wheels froze too, snapping an axle, and the mules - said they locked knees and sat down. We were lucky they didn’t break a leg or worse.”

“Did I want you to win?” Gan held his voice to a low rumble.

Link nodded, his focus still on that far-away disaster. “That's what Roan told me, later. All I remember is running, and waking up to Beedle and - the farmer carrying me out of the road. You didn’t know what happened any more than the rest of us.”

“But I willed you to win. Winning meant you reaching the wagon first. I didn’t specify  _ how _ ,” said Gan softly. “Can’t you see? This proves my point.”

Link’s focus snapped back to the now, his body tensing to lash out. “It proves  _ nothing _ . You were a  _ child _ -”

“There is no possible world in which I didn’t know from the time I could walk that I could manifest my Will into the world,” said Gan. “I know myself, what I’ve done in this time. Pieces of what I’ve done in others, and could do again. None of that could have been an accident. Faced with the consequence of my actions - again, without discipline or compassion - I willed everything to  _ stop _ . How many times have you danced with death because of me?”

Link roared in denial, lunging out of his seat and hurling the glass of lemonade and Tears at him. He missed by the narrowest possible margin, and the precious vessel shattered on the metal floor of the eating room. The brew it once held vanished into the shadows, where Gan could at least attempt to recover it later. He told himself it was worth the risk, that the possible healing properties of the concoction outweighed the probable consequences of exercising his wicked powers. Again. 

Gan waited for Link to exhaust himself with the yelling, maintaining eye contact, bracing himself against the temptation to call any  _ more _ magic as if against a strong wind. Link hobbled around the table too quickly, and stumbled. Gan stood to catch his frail little body before he could fall. The inescapable differences between them had only grown over the years, and that somehow hurt more than all the buzzing shocks crawling through his skin. 

Nine years made him enormous, yet Link remained in the body of a child. His  _ hair _ didn’t even grow.

“You’ll make yourself sick this way,” said Gan, when the curses gave way to hiccups. “Come on. Let’s go feed the cucco.”


	32. Chapter 32

Sunset on the eve of the longest day of the year buzzed with life. A clean breeze swept through the marsh from the distant south sea, and hidden songbirds sang from golden nests at the edge of time.

Two mismatched boys leaned against the verdigris brass railing of the ancient steel shipwreck, listening to the cicada romance one another across the wilderness. One was tall and dark, his fiery red hair pulled back in a simple three-strand plait hanging nearly to his knees. The small, pale boy with short wheat-gold hair wore a hinged brace of polished cedar on his mangled right leg, and had to stand on a crate to prop his elbows on the railing. They both wore loose homespun trousers with bright borders of stripes and dots woven at the edges. The pale boy wore blue with white, and the dark one wore cream with borders of yellow and blue and red.

“This hour always makes my head feel strange,” said the pale boy.

The tall one grunted, nodding. “Not surprised. At twilight, the distance between the realm of the living and the dead draws close. You have a foot in each I think.”

“I guess,” said the other. “Is that why you can make roads in the dark at dawn and dusk?”

“Probably. I  _ can _ do it anywhere there’s deep shadow, but it takes a  _ lot _ more work. Like the difference between sliding down a hill on an old shield, or running up that hill with a basket of stones in each hand,” said the taller boy, shifting his hip against the railing and folding his arms across his broad, bony chest. “I’ve been able to feel the power moving for as long as I can remember. I don’t know how to tell you what it’s like, embracing the shadows. When we first came here, I thought the timeshift orb would block it out, the way my mothers’ workroom and the temples and the fortress did. But I was ready to pay that price, to earn a place in the Light.”

“Oh Gan,” said the pale boy, pushing himself upright and raising his wide blue eyes to search the face of his companion. “I won’t let the demons win.”

“Let me know how that goes with one hand,” said Gan, his golden eyes fixed on the horizon. “You can’t hunt anymore. You can’t fight. You can’t even  _ sleep _ for two hours without waking up in a screaming nightmare.”

“I’ll figure out how to hunt if you give me back the flute,” said the boy with a shrug. “Anyways they’re not really nightmares. Not like it was. It starts, and then there’s a loud voice, and I wake up.”

“What does it say?” Gan asked, looking down at the boy. “I know a few things about dreams, Link. What do you see? Tell me the truth.”

“What is there to tell? There is fog, and a voice I can’t quite hear,” said Link, tracing an idle pattern against the ship’s rail. “There’s something very important, but I lost it, and something dangerous, but I don't know where that is either. I realize I’m falling, and then there’s a shout, and I wake up.”

“But you used to have different dreams. When did it change?” Gan spoke in a soft, rumbling voice, as to a nervous animal.

Link grasped the railing so hard his knuckles shone. “You took the horse and went into the Lost Woods. I went after you, but I - the forest is closed to me. I couldn’t find you in time to - stop what happened.”

Gan unfolded his arms and laid his hand on Link’s shoulder. “Ah. The wildfire.”

Link shook his head vehemently no. “The fire was an accident. A real one. You were running from a feral hive and you fell and died for a while. But that was before. When you were small. A fairy helped until I could find you that time. But there wasn’t a fairy at the end. You left. You left everything. There was so much blood. You were only fifteen.”

“I’m fifteen tomorrow,” said Gan.

“I know,” said Link. “Also I don’t have  _ anything _ for you and there’s not enough food left in the cold room for a feast and-”

“I don’t care about the food,” said Gan, pulling Link close and ruffling his fair hair in the fading twilight. “You do have something I want very much, even though you keep trying to pretend you don’t.”

“Not teaching you the song,” came the muffled reply.

“What I mean is, you have the Light inside you. It’s not just the orb or the flute. You run around being compassionate and generous and brave without even thinking about it,” said Gan with a little shake of his head. “I need to tell you some things that will be hard, but first I want to show you something.”

Link turned a suspicious glare up at him. “Another machine?”

“Not this time. Though - I’ve been thinking about a better way to make rugs. Remind me to show you the test model when we get to the workroom,” said Gan, releasing the smaller boy and tousling his hair.

Night followed them aft, and the hidden birds sang a little softer. Gan wordlessly offered Link his hand at every stair. Every time, Link refused. He snarled whenever his right leg tried to slip or fold under him, and he was drenched with sweat by the time they made it to the workroom at the stern. 

Support beams and narrow bits of random partition wall still remained from the smaller cabins which once lay athwart of the mizzenmast. Dozens of ancient crystals in golden cages filled the whole space with soft amber light. Masterfully joined wooden panels and rolling doors patched the damaged steel hull on the starboard side.

Gan pulled a heavy bench close to an open space on the worktable built against the entire port side, grumbling his disapproval when Link insisted on climbing onto the bench without help. He made complicated adjustments to brass wire and glass contraptions around the nearest crystal lamps, amplifying their brilliance. Link watched him work, expression closed. He showed no surprise whatever when Gan flipped back a rug draping a weathered crate, drawing out from it a smaller chest. He frowned at the pile of books Gan emptied onto the table, though he leaned in to get a better view.

“These belonged to the last captain of this ship. I’ve been translating them, though I don’t know if I’ll ever get all of the text. Too many idioms, or maybe abbreviations, or the language shifted a  _ lot _ ,” said Gan, flipping through pages in one of the dusty hardbound tomes. He laid it open on the table, gesturing to a detailed painting of a chrysalis hanging from a lightcrystal cage. Then he opened a handmade reedpaper journal to a marked page of flowing Gerudo script. “The last captain of this ship was an explorer. Loved wild places and everything in them. These ‘poor drawings’ served as notes for paintings he gave to his children and grandchildren - and to the far distant ancestors of your royal family. A few might even have survived in their treasury.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Hyrule doesn’t touch any sea at all - I mean, the only boats there are for lakes and stuff. Not like this,” said Link in confusion. “Does it say Hyrule used to be bigger?”

“I don’t think there was a Hyrule yet when this ship still floated,” said Gan. “This ship isn’t just  _ old _ . The last time anyone saw this butterfly was thousands of years ago, when your country was young. But these were already rare before the explorer and his friend restored this ship in the first place. The explorer kept trying to find a way to breed them. Believed something terrible would happen if they died out.”

“I don’t know how you can tell any of that from a drawing of a beanpod - but I’ve never seen any butterflies here,” said Link, gingerly turning pages with his left hand to look at the pictures. “Not even when I went to the long ago befores.”

“It’s not a bean- look, that’s not the important thing, ok? The butterfly just helped me figure out the  _ when _ better. And some of the words. The  _ point _ is I’ve figured out when  _ we _ are, in here. Give or take a few centuries,” said Gan, pinching the bridge of his long nose. 

“Oh,” said Link. “Does it matter?”

“Of  _ course _ it matters. The last person on this ship before you found it whenever ago was the great-great-granddaughter of the explorer. Her name was Rin, and she left a note on the last page of the last book - here,” said Gan, pulling another book from the stack and showing off the gap between the main text and the brief note at the end. “She was some kind of knight called a Skyrider, and she spent half her life trying to convince her village she wasn’t descended from crazy people. She found this place with the orb still active, but it was the same time on both sides of the spell. She turned it off, and she was mad because she thought it meant he  _ was _ crazy after all. She started packing things to take back home, but the orb was too heavy. So she put it back - and somehow turned it on by accident-”

“And it was still night inside,” said Link softly, tracing his fingers along the edge of the faded page.

“Exactly,” said Gan in triumph. “She stayed to read the journals here, and in the end agreed with the explorer that it was better if the orb was forgotten also, so people couldn’t fight over them or use them as weapons. But she couldn’t figure out how to destroy it either, so she turned the magic off and hid the orb.”

“Wait.  _ Also _ ?  _ Them _ ? What other thing-” began Link.

“Dunno. It’s never named. Something to do with an ancient Zelda and a holy place of some kind,” said Gan with a negligent shrug, turning pages in yet another book. He didn’t notice the color drain from Link’s pale face. He didn’t even look up as he hooked a stool close to perch on while he hunted for something in the old journal. “The point is - there are, or at least have been, others with your kind of magic. You’re not alone on that river, Link.”

“Ok,” said Link after a moment. “That - wasn’t so hard, I guess, learning this place is older than Hyrule.”

“Good, because the next thing is harder,” said Gan, still frowning as he skimmed pages. “You’ll need to know this when you go back. I don’t know if you can take these translations with you, but if you can? Do. It will save literally  _ years _ of work.”

“I’m not  _ going _ back,” said Link, thumping his fist on the table. 

Gan looked up with a wry grin. “It will be ok, you know. We know about the swamp monster this time. And you don’t have to go all the way back - just far enough to fix it. The books talk about that, charting a course through the river. I’m still finding all the scattered references to it so I can transcribe the notes for you in modern Hylian.”

“You don’t understand,” said Link.

“I understand more than you like to believe,” said Gan, setting his book on top of the other open ones. A single image spilled across both pages, wrought in thin, anxious black slashes and amorphous blobs of faded purple. Cramped notes crowded around the drawing, and when Gan turned the page slowly, the next several pages revealed the same kind of dark, gestural, nearly illegible studies. “You’ve seen magic like this, haven’t you?”

Link’s mouth formed the word yes, but he made no sound at all.

“This is the same plague I brought upon my people. The red cough. The miasma. The smothering fog that consumes life and magic and everything,” said Gan, his golden eyes fierce and bright. “The ancient explorer defeated the demon who created it, but the spell can’t outlive its creator. Which means that same demon is  _ still alive _ , in  _ our _ time.”

“But you didn’t mean to,” whispered Link. “It was an accident. A mistake.”

“Oh no. I  _ absolutely _ meant to raid the tomb of King Vaijun the Enduring to study his bones and summon his spirit,” said Gan, sitting back and tapping his nails against the table. “The  _ mistake _ was thinking I was so clever the Rova didn’t know what I was doing. When the red cough started, I forgot about that project, until the warrior spirit showed me the cursed bones at the bottom of the well. Only a sorcerer stronger than me could have seen and broken through the ward I’d hidden them under.”

“Or a demon,” mumbled Link.

“Precisely,” said Gan, handing him a different reedpaper journal, bound with yellow thread. “When you go back, if you can only take one book? Take  _ this _ translation and give it to me as soon as we’re safe here. I made a note where the chest of books is hidden, in case you have to go back to before I find them.”

Link took the journal as if it might turn about and bite him. “Why?”

“Because the other thing this curse does is block  _ mine _ . If I can just isolate that part of the pattern,” said Gan, gesturing broadly as he trailed off.

Link hung his head, staring a hole in the yellow-bound journal. 

The mismatched boys sat in silence for a long while, each wrapped in their own inscrutable thoughts. Link slouched further, tipping faintly to one side. He jerked awake - blinking fast and shaking his head, but Gan wouldn’t believe his dissembling. He lifted the smaller boy in his arms, carrying him to the rough little bedroom amidship where yards and yards of seaworn cloth veiled the stark metal walls, and piles of salt-faded rugs cushioned the unforgiving floor.

An hour passed while Gan argued Link  _ into _ the bed, and yet another slid past them as Gan held his hand and told him a long and rambling story about a cucco and a talking pumpkin. At last, Link drifted to sleep, and still Gan sat beside him for the better half of a third hour. 

In silence, Gan untangled himself from the sleeping boy, and in silence he returned to the upper deck. He gazed at the stars for a long while, shook his head at the moon, and stalked over to the neglected hulk of the fat wooden cannon. He reached into the charred bore, drawing from it a small bluestone ocarina that seemed to draw the moonlight deep into itself. 

The fourth hour found him leaning in the doorway of the bedroom, rolling his fingers over the little flute, playing a soft pattern of three. Link began to twitch in his sleep. Gan paused at the bottom of the melody, and reversed his path. 

Three. One. One higher.

Again.

A searing blue-white brilliance exploded from the faceted instrument, streaming across the room to wrap the pale boy in its enchantment. 

 

Gan stopped playing.

 

Link vanished.

 

Gan crossed the small room, his steps unsteady. He laid the flute on a table without looking at it. He knelt beside the bed, trailing his fingers across the faint hollow in the felted mattress, and wept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first song Link taught him two chapters ago was the Song of Healing. Link has used it before on page, most notably during an early scene in Come Unto These Yellow Sands. 
> 
> The other song is the Song of Soaring, which I happened to notice is a slight variation on the inverse of the Healing tune. Happy accident really, as I wasn’t planning this particular mechanic ahead of time, but the pieces just clicked into place in my head. Normally when invoked, Soaring would allow Link to choose where it takes him... but Link is asleep, and starting to dream again, so the spell will take its direction for his unconscious mind… and maybe a little from the mysterious magic inside him too...


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this a few days earlier than planned, because I am weak. Especially when I am feeling guilty for causing tears.

Ganondorf leaned against his best oiled sourwood loom, fumbling for the sleying hook. He wedged it into the wax seal on a new faceted glass bottle, prying at the tightly spun threads beneath. He bent the thin steel as he cursed and savaged the thing open, but that didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered.

He dropped the hook and the wax and the damp woolen wadding, tilting the bottle against his cracked lips. The burning liquor tasted like the voice of the black wind, and the fumes made his eyes water. He stared at the warm golden shimmer of his finest reed, pressing his fingers against the tidy flat wires.

“Sorry,” he said to the loom. “I sent your purpose away. But I  _ had _ to. You’ll live again though. Somewhen.”

The loom reflected the lazy midsummer afternoon, and said nothing.

“What good will it do anyone to finish you, huh? Who wears yellow and pale indigo together?  _ I _ certainly won’t,” said Ganondorf to the nascent cloth. “Maybe if you’d had the courage to  _ actually _ be green, instead of trying to be clever, I’d have tied you right up. But we’ll never know now, will we?”

Neither golden shuttle nor precious blue warp nor the hand’s breadth of chimera cloth gave him answer.

Ganondorf kicked the weaving bench. The elegant bit of clever joinery groaned and fell over, spilling tools and thread and notes everywhere.

“Yeah? Well I always hated you too,” he spat, lifting the bottle for another pull.

The liquor made it hard to think. That was good. Unfortunately walking tended to get complicated well before the booze could drown the voices in his head. 

Ganondorf leaned over the reed and heddles, whispering. “I didn’t mean you. Carry on.  _ You _ do a  _ fine _ job when you have purpose. Unlike that great lumping jackass.”

The loom said nothing.

Ganondorf leaned against the heavy sourwood frame, watching the light begin to fade. He tried to hate the pull of the shadows. He reminded himself once again the great danger they embodied.

Once again, reason failed to conquer desire.

Ganondorf sagged against the door of the ancient captain’s cabin, fighting back nausea. What would it serve to burn the looms? So what if he couldn’t bring himself to work them. Maybe some future explorer would delight in finding them. Maybe they would wonder after the fate of the makers.

Better if they didn’t. 

Ganondorf slammed the door behind him and stumbled to the railing to throw up. He stared at the sliver of blue-green water between the ancient ship and the modern marsh, spitting bile. He just - couldn’t bear to burn it all. 

He  _ wanted _ to. He wanted to sift the ashes of all the pretty lies through his fingers. He wanted to pour his fury into the world and he wanted to punish  _ someone _ for making him capable of misery. He was the king of demons. Demons don’t  _ have _ feelings. 

So why did  _ he _ have to?

It wasn’t  _ fair _ .

Ganondorf plunged a hand into the nearest waterbutt to wash his face and sour mouth. It stained his tongue with heat and salt and a metallic tang, reminding him unpleasantly of blood. He just barely managed to return to the railing in time.

The speckled cucco _rrwarked_ at him and rioted her way up to the rail so she could climb onto his shoulder. She _chirred_ and nibbled at his ear when he didn’t pet her immediately. 

“You’re a sorry excuse of a bird, you know? Your entire purpose in life is nothing but eating bugs and shitting on things and becoming food for something stronger than you,” he told her, prodding her soft chest. 

The hen clicked and whistled at him, nibbling at his fingers.

“That’s right, I  _ did _ steal your eggs this morning. And I’ll steal them again tomorrow too,” he said, cupping his hand over her head. “If there is a tomorrow. There might not be, you know. You can’t depend on it.”

She whistled softly, nudging her beak into his hand and getting comfortable on his shoulder.

“You can’t depend on  _ anything _ ,” he murmured to her. It would be so  _ easy _ to just - close his fist. Crush her. Snap her neck. Toss her through the timeveil to explode in a poof of feather and bone. Less than a minute to destroy her entire world. No effort at all. 

Gan pushed himself more or less upright, stroking her glossy feathers. She clicked and _chirred_ , apparently content to roost on his bare shoulder even though he couldn’t possibly be walking a straight line. He reclaimed the bottle of Tears from the steps beside the cabin door. 

“You should go back to your flock,” he told the speckled hen, taking another drink. “It’s late, and the darkness is coming. You don’t want Blue to get the good perch tonight and have to sleep on the ground again do you? It’s bad for your feathers to keep doing that.”

She ignored him, reaching over to preen a stray curl and fussing when her beak caught in the snarls. He untangled her and meandered towards the coop. The other cucco scolded him for interrupting their dinner arguments. The speckled hen screamed bloody murder when he wrangled her off his shoulder, and they all scattered.

“That’s right, run away from the king of evil. Cowards,” he snarled, lifting the bottle again. The sharp flavor wasn’t so bad once the first sting rolled off the tongue. The searing rush of it actually began to seem pleasant after a bit. Like the pain of cracking knuckles to release pressure inside the joint.

Made descending to the sandbar uncomfortably interesting though.

Somehow, he managed, sinking his bare feet into warm sand and thinking of home. The texture, the scent, the vague impression of damp were all wrong. But. His head spun a little less, and the rising tide of twilight promised to fill the hollow places inside him. 

“We shadows lie though,” he told the sunset, raising the bottle in salute. “Wicked all the way down.”

The sunset said nothing, giving way before the greed of Night. Not that she was even a quarter so vicious in this far, wild country. Even in the winter, when she brought snow and ice, the people of Clocktown hadn’t feared her hunger.

Ganondorf sat on the sandbar, letting the tides roll through him, wondering for the thousandth time if he would ever know what terrible power he’d invoked, or if the world was already crumbling from the center out, and he would be long dead by the time the last pebble fell. 

The fairy might know. Not that she ever appeared to him directly. His presence likely weakened and frightened her. Still - she seemed connected to the Warrior in some way. Messages he’d left at her shrine generally seemed to reach the warrior spirit before, anyway. Not that Gan had seen any sign of him since everything happened. Nor had the fairy whisked away his other gifts. And he hadn’t seen any new salvage drift within sight of the ship in half a year, either.

If he took a better offering to the shrine, a  _ really _ valuable one, maybe she would overlook his evil one last time and summon the warrior spirit. 

Gan lifted the bottle for another drink as the angry red sun vanished behind the trees, wondering vaguely if he could reach the rest of the Tears in this state. The lightcrystals would already be glowing, so the shadowroads wouldn’t help. Not that he could breach the timeveil that way in any case.

A reflection on the shrine island caught his attention. Small, irregular, colorless. Maybe a magpie with a bit of tin scrap.

The marsh echoed with a terrible cry like the black wind and the rushing floods and the rending earth all at once.

Gan scrambled to his feet to get a better line of sight, but still saw nothing more than the odd glimmer in the midsummer twilight. He stumbled to the half-finished reed boat he’d been building last summer and wedged the bottle of Tears in the wet sand so he could work on the knots with both hands. He roared at it in frustration, and the prow made an unhealthy crunch when he grasped it.

Gan reclaimed the half-empty bottle of Tears and fell forward into the shadowroads. His head spun, and he couldn’t see any sign of the reflection here. But. A faint silvery haze crowned a scraggly hill more or less in the direction of the shrine. A hundred formless, toothy gloop-beasts roamed the darkness, but that didn’t matter. 

Nothing mattered.

Dazzling arcs of many-colored light sliced through the shadow world, carving great jagged holes in every road. Gan tried to edge around one, but the ground sagged and shriveled under his feet, tumbling him into the mud of the mundane world. 

Somehow the bottle survived, and with most of its contents, too. 

Another terrible cry ripped through the twilight, shivering the soggy earth. 

“Spirit! I bring you a sacrifice,” yelled Ganondorf. “Show your shiny ass where I can see it, you tardy bastard.”

“ **You have left the light** ,” bellowed the Warrior Spirit from the crest of the shrine hill.

“The light rejected me first,” snapped Gan, grasping at roots and straggling branches to keep his balance on the punishing climb. 

“ **Do not lose faith** ,” boomed the spirit. “ **So long as you bear even the smallest glimmer of light in your heart, I am with you.** ”

“Yeah? Well then,” snarled Gan, trying not to think about how much of the hill remained to climb. “Where the fuck were you nine months ago when I needed you?”

“ **There has been a great battle underway** ,” said the spirit. Somehow, despite the immense power in his voice, he seemed tired.

“Right. I’m only the doom of the world, the next destined host of the great destroyer,” grumbled Gan. “Just a minor inconvenience for the sainted hero.”

The warrior spirit stood with his gloved hands folded over the pommel of his great spiral sword. Mud stained his shining livery to mid-thigh, and his broad shoulders rolled forward as though he bore an immense weight. He seemed hardly any taller than a mortal man this time. “ **Where is your friend?** ”

Ganondorf stared into those blazing white eyes, and forgot the booze was supposed to be an offering. “I killed him. Whaddaya gonna do about it? Huh?”

The spirit tilted his head slightly, staring back without any appreciable expression.

“Don’t stand there like a rotting post -  _ fight me _ ,” demanded Gan, wiping fire from his lips and thumping his bare chest with his free hand. “That’s why you finally came isn’t it? To stop the murderous demon king? Well,  _ do it _ already.”

“ **Don’t force my hand** ,” said the spirit.

“Do it,” said Gan, rooting himself as firmly as possible given the drink and the slope and the darkness moving through his blood. “What are you?  _ Scared _ ?”

“ **You won’t win** ,” said the spirit with a faint shake of his head.

“I don’t care! I’ll fight you anyway,” said Gan, calling the skyfire and darkness into his hands, letting it crawl over his skin, filling him, strengthening him, fizzing through his bones with exquisite possibility.

“ **Nothing defies this blade and lives,** ” said the spirit, setting a fist upon the hilt.

“What do you know about anything, spirit? You think I don’t know how to banish your kind? Just try me,” growled Gan, winding a dense ball of dark skyfire in his fist.

“ **Don’t** ,” said the spirit.

“ _ Fuck you-! _ ” Ganondorf hurled volley after volley of purple and gold lightning at the spirit, but his spiraling rainbow sword consumed the power completely, though the tip never left the ground.

“ **He isn’t dead,** ” said the spirit.

The world stopped. Gan dropped to one knee, struggling to breathe.

“ **The key was never meant to be a weapon,** ” said the warrior in what passed for a quiet voice for him.

“Anything can be a weapon,” said Gan, letting the magic begin to unravel. “Even love.”

The warrior spirit frowned. “ **What do you know of love, demon king?** ”

“Enough,” said Gan, dropping the threads of power. “Do what you came for.”

“ **You invoked a terrible mercy for a broken boy** ,” said the spirit. “ **Why?** ”

“He - wouldn’t teach me the song to fix it,” said Gan, lifting his chin. “There is no hope left in this time after what I have done.”

“ **Do not be certain that you have triumphed so soon, demon king. Your words say one thing, and your heart another,** ” said the spirit. “ **What was broken may be mended -** ”

“I will pay the price,” said Ganondorf, offering the remainder of the Tears.

“ **Return what you have stolen and with it I will restore the balance,** ” said the spirit.

“No,” said Ganondorf, wedging the bottle in the dirt. “It isn’t mine to give. Anyways, my people have stories about what happens when you give spirits too much power.”

“ **There is a cost to what you seek, child of prophecy,** ” warned the spirit.

“Take my magic instead,” said Gan.

“ **This is not within my power,** ” said the spirit with a shake of his head.

“There might be a way,” said Gan. “I found fragments of deep and ancient patterns that change the rules of magic. But to study this riddle and craft the spell I will need time - and the bones of a cursed king.”

The spirit tilted his head the other way. “ **You now ask three boons, child of prophecy. Which do you desire more?** ”

Gan sighed. There could be no doubt what he must answer, but that didn’t ease the pain of saying it. “I am a mortal danger to him and everyone as long as I have this corrupted, evil magic. So. Bring me bones.”

After a moment the spirit took a knee before him. “ **Why does the king of evil weep?** ” 

“You could never understand,” said Gan, scrubbing his least muddy arm across his face. “Howsoever evil I have been and will be, I am still human.”

“ **For now** ,” said the spirit.

“What more do you want from me?” Gan gestured helplessly.

“ **Peace** ,” said the spirit, a thread of sorrow in his terrible voice. “ **I** **am the hopes and dreams of the hundred thousand million lives that balance upon this blade. Wherever chaos consumes order, whenever malice devours love, however the balance tips into darkness, I am there. In the name of the Light which must not perish, I am bound to eternal battle against hatred and fear and cruelty so long as blood is spilled in the name of Darkness.** ”

“So,” said Ganondorf, studying the spirit’s shining, painted face for the truth.  _ He _ wasn’t bound by any promise - only his questionable mercy and the law of the Three. “Why didn’t you kill me nine years ago and save everyone else the trouble?”

“ **Is the existence of evil a reason to embrace it? By the will of the golden gods, there is somehow a spark of light even in the darkest heart,** ” said the spirit. “ **Do you wish to remain in solitude here, to study and work without distraction?** ”

“Not really,” confessed Gan. “But I can’t go home, and I can’t pay the price you name to heal him. It is what it is. All that matters is-”

“ **It is already done,** ” said the spirit, standing to his full height. “ **You have thrice chosen the greater good, at great personal cost. From such Light as this, what was ravaged may be woven whole.** ”

Ganondorf stared at the spirit, unable to form actual words. 

“ **Go, make offerings to the guardian of this shrine,** ” said the spirit. “ **Hold vigil there, and seek the light within. Embrace what is good and true and bright, wholly and without reservation, and all will be right in the end and the end and the end.”**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time Note: It's buried in the first paragraphs, but chapter happened roughly a month or a little more after the previous one. I may actually need to back and tag the chapter summaries with the season, but I'm not sure.


	34. Chapter 34

Night lifted none of the muggy heat. The magic of the mask didn’t hold it back either. Leaping from root to root whenever possible only kept Link out of the muddy waters long enough to truly hate having to slog through them again. 

Nothing for it though. So long as Gan refused to return the ocarina, he had exactly two choices: walk the wide world in the boots of a dead god, or in the weakness of the child he once was, ages ago.

Zelda might be fourteen by the time he could make his way to the heart of Hyrule in hopes the timeshifts would have given her another ocarina. Could he leave Gan alone so long though? And how many  _ years _ might he need to stay, to convince her to let him borrow it?

Link hacked at vegetation with the enchanted sword, cringing at the necessary blasphemy. Of  _ course _ the most direct route to solid ground lay through a stranglevine thicket.

Gan had abandoned the boat for the shadow roads tonight despite his vehement disavowal of magic - how would he return to the ship? Could he swim well enough now to cross the marsh without either?

Link leaned against a cypress stump in the sweltering dawn, scraping together the dregs of his will. He’d never really thought this body  _ had _ limits. Then again, he’d never needed to walk halfway across the world in one frantic month before. 

What if Gan misunderstood about the vigil, and stayed in the shrine past dawn? More than a day? If he began to starve, would the fairy finally accept the good in his heart and help him? Heal him?

Link charged through the swamp - or rather, waded angrily - trying to remember the location of the nearest safe grotto. Somewhere no one would be poking their noses in for at least a few months. Except he  _ also _ needed to acquire provisions and sort out how to get them to the ship this time.

Gan was right. He should have known that mixed raiding band last fall would be far more dangerous than the others. He should have insisted Gan remain on the ship, or else compromised about the cannon. He’d allowed himself to grow complacent. Overconfident. Dependent on weapons he couldn’t use in Gan’s presence.

How would he ever guard the ship and stock their larder without the ocarina? 

Link pulled himself up the steep wash, cursing his mountain of mistakes. The masks, the weapons, these gave him deadly strength, but the ocarina was what made him a hero. What possessed him to surrender it? Why did he ever think Gan would give it back? What good could he do for anyone while he was bound to the indifferent course of mortal time?

Link pushed himself onward through the trees. 

One step. 

Another. 

The demon mask from the shrine by the farm - what powers might it have? He’d never tried to use it, only made certain no one else could stumble upon it.

“You get around,” called a familiar voice.

Link hesitated. The morning sun glared across the open fields ahead, making distances hard to measure, and blurring the edges of trees and rocks enough to suggest people and buildings where there shouldn’t be any. Or - maybe he needed to rest. Maybe it was his own mortal exhaustion bleeding away the power of the mask, confusing his sight.

Imagining voices on the wind surely made a good argument for laying down in the tall grass on the lee of the hill and persuading himself he was only taking a nap in the garden. Blocking out the shrill cicada with the memory of lazy honeybees and harmless darners buzzing through the fragrant blooms. The other children laid down to rest in the afternoon - Idrea didn’t need him underfoot in her kitchen while she finished the pies for dinner. Corfo wouldn’t mind if he stole just a moment in the shade of the apple trees. And Gan would sing-

“What is a demigod doing  _ walking _ across Termina?” The voice called out from closer this time. Slightly above him, floating down from the silhouette of a man leaning against a high-wheeled, two-horse gig. 

Ensren.

Link froze, struggling to push words past the lump in his throat. “ **How did you follow me?** ”

Ensren gestured to the sleek post horses. “Dangerous habit for minor gods, underestimating mortals. Even if your blade didn’t blaze like dawn, you leave a track a child could read.”

“ **You don’t belong here,** ” began Link, dragging his sword along beside him. As long as the tip remained grounded, there wouldn’t be accidents. Probably. 

“Last I checked, I was still standing on the mortal plane,” said Ensren, his bare arms crossed over his broad chest. “What are  _ you _ here for? This time?”

“ **That’s not your business,** ” growled Link. Why wasn’t he afraid?

“On the contrary,” returned Ensren, stepping away from the cart. “I think my family has a lot of business with you,  _ Vohatyr _ .”

Link knew he should never have used that name again. He just - couldn’t think of anything else when Corfo needled his aloof outlander customer for the way to remember him to the gods of a Lightsday.

“You may be able to fool city people with a mortal disguise, but you don’t know much about humans if you think farmers wouldn’t notice an ageless youth come to our gate for  _ highly _ specific merchandise year after year, and always paying a king’s ransom for it? You don’t even bother to change your hair or the cut of your clothes,” said Ensren, calm as if he were reciting the price of beans, his hazel eyes unwavering before the bedraggled might of an ancient warrior.

“ **Oh no** ,” said Link, leaning upon his terrible sword as he sank to his knees on the hill. 

Ensren clicked his tongue and shook his head. “You’re not a very  _ smart _ god, are you?”

“ **Oh Ensren my brother,** ” said Link, pressing his forehead to the spiral ricasso of the sword. It hummed with power, with hunger, with rage. He wound his fists on the hilt. Knowing what must be done didn’t make it any easier. “ **_Why_ ** **did you have to follow me?** ”

“A man has a right to know who he’s doing business with,” said Ensren, rooting himself not a hand’s breadth from the divine sword. “You look like trampled horseshit. If there ever was a world in which you could frighten me, this isn’t it.”

“ **That is foolish** ,” said Link, though he couldn’t quite make himself rise. How would he move past this day, this moment? Saving the world required  _ sacrifices _ . So many. He’d given so much of his heart over so many times - how could the gods demand this too?

“Come - put that little toy away and have a drink,” said Ensren, turning back to the gig. “I brought a crate of applejack since you haven’t bothered to stop by in nearly a year and that seems to be where you get the better half of your powers. You certainly buy enough of it.”

Link rocked forward on his knees, trying to heave himself back to his feet. It would be easier from behind. Where he didn’t have to see the despair and betrayal in his eyes too. “ **Who else knows?** ”   
  
“We don’t gossip about our customers to outsiders,” said Ensren, hooking a jug out of the tiny chest strapped behind the seat. “Da has to get creative when the tax weasels come around though, no thanks to your little gifts.”

“ **I was - trying to help** ,” said Link, chest tight with the mortal grief he couldn’t express or ease. This body wasn’t capable of sorrow or joy. If the furious deity whose skin he borrowed ever knew anything but war, the shell preserved in the mask had forgotten it. “ **Helping is good. Heroes help people. Heroes are good. I was a hero once. Long ago tomorrow, in a hard time. I did everything in the name of the Light. But a real hero saves everyone.** ”

Ensren offered him the jug of applejack. “Heroes aren’t defined by the flag they fight under or the gifts they give or the number of lives owed to their deeds. A hero is someone with the courage to do what is right, especially when it’s hard, especially when the world is ugly and unjust.”

Link stared at the jug, longing for the oblivion it represented. “ **The prophecy. The princess. The priest. The sages. The people. They all said it was right. They told me all the bad things he’d done - and he never even denied any of it. He was evil. He seized the throne. He used dark and terrible magics. He sought to open the sacred realm and claim the power of the gods for himself.** ”

“If you actually believed any of that bullshit, you wouldn’t be trying to atone for it now,” said Ensren.

**“But I** **_did_ ** **believe. I** **_saw_ ** **the destruction, how seven years of his rule warped and corrupted the world,** ” said Link, feeling small and lost before his calm confidence, despite the mask.

“Except,” said Ensren, taking the divine sword from his nerveless fingers. “That wasn’t the whole truth, was it?”

Link shook his head in misery. “ **I went back to warn her, so the prophecy couldn’t happen again. She - had him captured when I was away. Executed. The gods revived him. The** **_good_ ** **gods. The** **_old ones_ ** **. They wouldn’t give their power to an evil man. But they - they still destroyed him. They tried to hide what they’d done, and I can’t fix it. It is too late to take back what I said in that time.”**

“You’re not responsible for the injustice some ancient princess chose to do with your warning,” said Ensren, cutting to the heart of the tangle as always. “That doesn’t explain why you’re  _ here _ or why a demigod of war has been haunting  _ my _ family.”

“ **To make the bad things from many tomorrows never become,** ” said Link.

“Good luck with that,” said Ensren, setting down the jug to study the divine sword more closely. “People are complicated in ways spirits and demons aren’t. The golden gods gave us free will, Vohatyr. You can’t  _ make _ anyone be good all the time, and even if you could, it wouldn’t be real. Virtue comes less from the  _ doing _ than from the  _ choice _ to do what is kind and just and right.”

“ **_This_ ** **is why your family** ,” said Link, groping for words. “ **You embrace a stranger. You argue with a demigod. You look at one of the most powerful weapons in the world with curiosity, not greed.** ”

“I wouldn’t dare use this blade for all the money and all the fields and all the books in all the world,” said Ensren, shaking his head at it, watching the way it refracted the light. “It’s beautiful in the same way a lightning storm is beautiful. In theory, and from a distance, and only when you’re not on the business end of it, which in this case I think is both.”

“ **Lightning** ,” said Link, scrubbing a hand across his face and rocking back on his heels. “ **The fate of the world tilts in time with the war in his heart - he** **_is_ ** **the storm. Dark as thunderclouds and bright as lightning. I persuaded him away to a safe place in this time, for now.** ”

“Who is with him? Humans need other people around, or else their minds will shiver to pieces,” said Ensren, giving back the sword. 

**“I am** ,” said Link. “ **He isn’t safe for other people, and they aren’t safe for him. I can’t let it happen again.** ”

“Unless you’re the kind of spirit that can be in many places at once that’s bullshit. I’ve been following you for  _ two weeks _ ,” said Ensren, wagging his finger at a demigod as if he spoke to a wayward child. “Who’s been with him while you were walking cross-country? Who is with him now?”

“ **There is a fairy shrine-** ” began Link.

“I mean, who that he can see and talk to? If he’s as conflicted as you say, no fae creature will show herself near him. Among mortals, only the pure of heart can thread deep wildwood labyrinths and speak with fairies and so forth,” said Ensren. 

“ **So he is already lost. Has been lost. Again. It has all been for nothing,** ” said Link, returning the sword to its place across his back and hanging his head. Gan was right. He  _ would _ have to end it. He’d ignored so many warnings of Ganondorf’s inevitable descent towards evil out of his own weakness and sentiment. He would have to go back. As soon as he recovered the ocarina. As soon as he could gather the strength. 

“There’s a vast difference between  _ potential _ and  _ actual _ evil. Whatever poor choices he might have made in his past lives, whatever your devotees might have blamed on him, what matters right now is who he becomes in  _ this _ life,” said Ensren, placing a kind hand on his shoulder. Warm. Steady. “Don’t let your fear of another tragedy destroy the very hope you’re trying to save.”

Link stared at him in wordless confusion.

“Living alone in the wilderness only works in myths and legends and storybooks. Actual people need more than food and shelter. They need community if they are ever going to understand what is good and right and true. They need family. They need purpose. They need to love and be loved. They need to be able to make little mistakes so they can learn, and they need to be free to choose their fate,” said Ensren gently. “Bring him to us, Vohatyr.”

“ **I can’t** ,” said Link, his hand drifting to the coiled braid. 

“You don’t have to save the world alone. We may not have magic powers, but we can still help,” said Ensren. “What’s his name?”

“ **Ganondorf** ,” murmured Link.

“Oh,” said Ensren.


	35. Chapter 35

Another glorious midsummer sunset gilded the vast southern fields of Termina. Rain clouds gathered upon the distant hem of the mountains, but the wind lazed across the countryside, disinterested in easing the heat anywhere else.

Two men sat on the slope of a hill near the verge of plain and cypress forest. They were of a height, both densely muscled, both serious. One wore deceptively simple clothing dyed in shades of indigo and gold, the other wore shining silver armor and snow-white livery. One man held a coil of red rope as if it were a holy relic, the other held a jug of distilled spirits as a drowning man holds his breath. One spoke with the quiet matter-of-fact pragmatism of a true farmer. The other spoke with the voice of tempests.

One was merely mortal. 

The divine warrior set the empty jug beside him and closed his shining white eyes. He buried his painted face in his gloved hands, and a flood of many-colored light poured from him and the great spiral sword strapped to his back. Birds rioted from the trees, and small creatures fled through the tall grass in stark terror. The farmer remained.

The light faded away as twilight deepened, leaving behind a pale boy with golden hair, small for his age, his blue eyes haunted. He wore a shapeless charcoal tunic and ill fitting gray breeches. His black boots showed the stains and insults of hard travel, and the plain sword upon his back rode in a battered sheath. 

The boy offered a painted wooden mask to the farmer. He accepted it after a long silence, setting it aside to pull the exhausted boy into his arms instead, humming an old lullaby.


	36. Chapter 36

Dawn tiptoed through the dripping cypress, whispering over the surface of the murky water. The swamp seemed weirdly peaceful, and even the dragonflies lazing about in the distance contributed only a sleepy hum to the morning. Link knelt at the stern of the stolen boat, pulling the oar through the waters slowly, silencing his approach as much as possible. Nothing seemed to notice his passing - even the frogs ignored him. Yet he remained completely unable to shake the sense of looming danger.

Link brought the boat alongside the shrine island, and still, nothing happened. He touched his own face to reassure himself he hadn’t grabbed the stone mask and forgotten about it. He told himself he should be grateful for the peace, securing the little craft to a couple young cypress near the shore.

And still, the nebulous dread followed him.

Link told himself it was likely nothing more than the lingering electric buzz under his skin. It didn’t really  _ hurt _ \- but it itched, and made him feel jittery and strange when it flared. The great desert fairy restored most of him, eventually. Some unusually stubborn twist of Gan’s wild lightning blast still resisted her magic, even after she managed to knit Link’s body back together. 

It flared again when he passed the gate of the shrine, gilding the edges of everything and tingling through his squishy new flesh and tickling his ears with the illusion of a murmured prayer like distant thunder. He’d tried to listen to it more closely, many times. The pattern always seemed different, and he could never puzzle out more than a word or two before it vanished entirely. It reminded him of the half-nightmares that broke his rest in this time, and it reminded him of waking up in the Beedle wagon far too late.

Link shook the thought away, padding down the marble slope towards the subtle luminescence of the sacred spring. At the edge of the water Gan sat in perfect lotus, facing the living waters rising at the center of the pool. His long, frayed braid coiled on the ground behind him, and the half-empty bottle of King’s Tears stood in the exact middle of the other dusty gifts on the offering stone.

“It’s a good thing you weren’t born a thief,” Gan rumbled without turning.

Link winced. “You said that once, before.”

“It’s only truth. You’re terrible at being stealthy, and  _ you _ could never sneak up on  _ me _ anyways,” said Gan, lifting his chin. He still did not turn, but only stretched his hands with audible cracks and pops. “Why did I say it last time? What were you doing?”

“I was - trying to surprise you. A good surprise. A gift. For your birthday. It was a very small thing, so I was going to hide it in your room for you to discover later. I guess I thought that would make it more interesting,” said Link, easing closer. 

“No more hiding,” rumbled Gan with a shake of his head. “I don’t like this game.”

“I’m sorry,” said Link, pausing just behind him. Gan was being so strange this time, always either dangerously intense or eerily subdued, with nothing in between. 

“I don’t want  _ sorry _ ,” grumbled Gan. “I  _ want _ you to be real this time.”

“I’m here,” murmured Link, reaching out with his weak right hand to touch Gan’s bare shoulder lightly.

Gan said nothing, but reached up to press his hand with surprising gentleness.

“You’re trembling,” said Link. “When did you last eat? Sleep? How long have you been just sitting here?”

Gan shrugged. “That doesn’t matter. It’s fine. I left the goats plenty, and the cucco can fend for themselves.”

“I asked about  _ you _ , not the animals. Stop trying to shrug this off. Even if you don’t care anymore what happens to you, it matters to me,” said Link, circling around to his left side and trying to meet his gaze. But Gan’s eyes were closed, and in the dim ethereal reflection of the spring his lashes caught the light almost as if damp. 

“I said, it’s fine. The visions are just - getting stronger. Hard to keep holding focus,” said Gan with a sigh. “Get your blade out so we can move on to the next already.”

Link frowned, shaking his shoulder. “What are you talking about? Gan, it’s  _ me _ . I’m here.”

Gan opened his golden eyes by the smallest possible margin. “Yeah. You say that every time. I just - can’t stay in the dream. I have to wake up. I haven’t found it. I have to - keep trying. Do it quick this time, ok? Run me through or something since you’re whole in this one, so I can wake up faster.”

“What are you talking about? Why would I - Gan - listen to me. I’m not here to hurt you. These are  _ bad thoughts _ ,” said Link, dropping to his knees and trying vainly to make Gan look at him. 

“I’m not a nice person. My head is  _ full _ of bad things, all the time. That’s why I need you to help me wake up,” said Gan, pressing his hand gently. “It’s alright. I’d do it myself - just can’t seem to focus long enough to conjure a knife-”

“ _ Stop _ , please. Don’t do this again. Listen to me,” begged Link, cupping his left hand under Gan’s jaw and forcing him to meet his eye. “I’m sorry it took me a while to make it back home, ok? But you don’t need a knife.  _ Any _ knife. I’m right here with you, for real. I  _ am _ mostly healed now. It’s alright. Everything will be ok this time. You’re not dreaming anymore. You’re not alone.  _ I’m here _ .”

Gan’s golden eyes searched his own, revealing nothing of his thoughts. After a long silence, he pulled Link off balance and folded him in a fierce embrace.

“Um,” said Link.

“Shut up,” murmured Gan into his hair. “Don’t scare me like that again, you  _ stupid _ bastard.”

Link couldn’t find any answer to that, so they remained beside the fairy spring for a long time in the quiet. Being enveloped in his strength and warmth was somehow weirdly comforting, like a quiet dream, like the memory of sitting near Idrea’s ovens in winter.  He knew Gan wasn’t any bigger than he’d ever been at fifteen - and he certainly was thinner than before. If they made it through to the other side of destiny this time, he would be even taller in a few years. But the last time he’d been this much smaller than his enemy-friend-brother-son-captive was probably half a century ago, if the branching times could be laid end-to-end.

That attempt ended in one of the more painful disasters, too.

When Gan fell asleep and began to list to the side, he couldn’t bear it any longer. He thumped his fist against Gan’s chest when nothing else got through to him. Unfortunately that mostly encouraged Gan to tighten his grip until Link could barely breathe.

“We - should go. Rest, and eat, and - we should travel to Clocktown. For supplies and - things. I’ll need your help to manage,” Link managed. “Still not - quite as strong or steady as before.”

“Later,” he mumbled. 

“Don’t be stubborn,” wheezed Link. 

“I’ll think about it,” said Gan. “Just - give me a minute. Ok?”


	37. Chapter 37

Harvest celebrations in Termina straddled the golden border of summer and autumn. Any given day could bring sweltering heat or cooling sunshowers, often within hours of each other. Farmers cursed the sky and the gods and their neighbors and their neighbor’s cow and anything else they could think of, anxiously awaiting the right moment to mow the grain.

Ganondorf stuffed his hands in his vest pockets, ambling through the verge toward the South Gate. He remembered the flight from Clocktown as rather  _ significantly _ shorter than the long walk to it. He hadn’t expected that, since he’d nearly doubled in height, and Link seemed to be more or less the same. His memory might have grown fuzzy from so many years seeing nothing but their little corner of the far swamp, but more likely Link had quietly altered time - or his experience of time - with that bluestone flute.

But could he have managed two or three  _ weeks _ trudging through snow and frozen marshland at that age? In city clothes? Even his wolfos-fur cloak wouldn’t have made much difference once the rest of him got soaked. 

What foolishness he’d indulged then, thinking he could have crossed the Sand Sea and defied the great destroyer alone. At  _ six _ . He abhorred his mountainous debts to the Warrior Spirit - but what could be done? His only leverage against it remained his inherent threat to the powers of Light.

Gan couldn’t help but hate how the spirit had rendered him nearly powerless. 

But - maybe that imbalance would change when he figured out how to free himself from the curse of his wicked magic. And if the bones didn’t work, there might be another ancient power that  _ would _ .

Gan set the thought aside for a quieter hour, calling over his shoulder; “You ok back there short stuff?”

“Fuck you,” grumbled Link. “Should have hired a damn horse.”

Gan laughed. “Don’t be stupid. There’s only one place in the world you could steal the kind of horse that could carry me, and nowhere you can  _ buy _ one.”

“I meant for  _ me _ ,” grumped Link. “Frivolous or not, we’re getting a cart on the way back, and that’s the end of it.”

“Sure - if you  _ want _ to hire an  _ empty _ wagon,” said Gan, turning about and walking backwards to annoy his friend further. It felt strange to see the entire horizon vanish in the blue after so long in the marsh, hemmed in by swamp and forest. “I don’t understand how you expect festival prices to be  _ lower _ . Even if you’re right, how can it be enough to stretch a few hundred rupee for six months’ supply? If they’ll even  _ accept _ such an archaic cut.”

“You’ll see. Don’t worry so much,” said Link with a sigh. 

“Who’s worried? You’ll see things my way before the festival’s over,” said Gan with a wry grin. At least he’d persuaded Link to bring their bows. If the shooting gallery still existed, a few days should triple their funds.

Link growled at him, trudging along beside the wagon ruts some twenty yards behind. So much dust and dried mud covered his boots they seemed more brown than black, and he’d stripped off his dark woolen overtunic in deference to the warm afternoon. He pretended not to be leaning on the twistvine walking stick, but they both knew he needed more time to rebuild his old strength.

Gan clicked his tongue and climbed up onto the road to wait for him to catch up.

“I don’t need  _ help _ ,” grumped Link.

“Of course not. We merely need to reach the gate before sunset,” said Gan lightly. “Unless you think we can hunt dinner  _ and _ breakfast this close to town.”

“You  _ could _ have given me the ocarina back and it wouldn’t have been a problem,” said Link, jabbing at his chest with the stick.

“And  _ you _ could have taught me the song, but you didn’t, so here we are. Half a day from town, out of supplies, and  _ absolutely _ filthy,” said Gan, catching the stick in his fist. “We’ll get better prices tomorrow if we don’t look like we slept in the dirt for the last fortnight.”

Link groaned, and cursed, but in the end he agreed to the indignity of riding Gan’s shoulder at least to the edge of the ring-road outside the squat walls. He didn’t really weigh much, just enough to make his muscles burn after an hour. So he shifted Link to the other side, ignoring his protests, and Gan’s long strides ate the miles to the South Gate with an hour to spare.

The guard tried to make trouble about keeping pirates out of the city. So Gan loomed over the little man and complimented his bravery for insulting a witch.

Link groaned and buried his face in his hands - but the guard moved. 

Inside the city, people did stare, and whisper, and the guards cringed when they walked too close. But - the crowd parted for the red-haired giant, and the women at the laundry pool promptly decided their washing was done. 

The years hadn’t been kind to the Stock Pot Inn. He didn’t remember it being quite so dark and close either, but the innkeeper took two purple rupees, the names Dinauru and Vohatyr, and asked no questions. Anju served them pumpkin soup in the kitchen, friendly and oblivious as ever. She made small talk, sharing market gossip and innocently remarking on her surprise to meet a boy pirate, as everyone always said only girls could be pirates. 

Gan laughed with her, telling himself it was better if no one connected him to the wayward child he’d been before. He ignored Link’s glare and dredged up a couple vague stories about the ship’s cucco getting stuck in the crow’s nest, finding shipwrecks on the western ‘reef,’ and fending off seagoing blin.

They won four hundred rupee at the shooting gallery that night, and the owner gave them another fifty to never come again. 

Gan lay awake until almost dawn, just listening to the unfamiliar noises of the inn and the city around them. His mind raced in nonsense circles, starting a fresh thought in the middle of another. Nothing important - his wickedness offered the same familiar memories and possibilities in the middle of thinking up lists of things to look for in the market and trying to spin out the fastest way to scrape together enough rupee for six months of provisions  _ and _ a cart  _ and _ horses to pull it.  

He woke an hour after dawn, his left arm full of needles and his shoulders one enormous ache from the awkward position they’d curled up in. He laid his other hand on Link’s back, and thought about waking him up too. Getting an early start with the trading.

But - why bother? Without animals to feed, they could lay abed as late as they wanted for once. And how often did Link sleep so deeply he actually snored? Soft, childlike, innocent. Everything Gan was not, never had been, and may never be.

He rolled onto his back, pulling Link halfway onto his chest so he could stretch and shake off the tingling without waking him. 

Gan surfaced again as the carillon of the great clock sang out noon. Link yawned, his ear still resting over Gan’s heart, his pale fists wound in the soft, lumpy wool of his shirt.

“Mornin,” mumbled Gan, brushing his hand through Link’s golden hair.

“Sorta,” grumped Link, yawning again. “How long you been awake?”

“Dunno. Hungry?” Gan murmured, reluctant to move at all. Food could wait. 

“Mmmf. Don’t  _ wonna _ cook,” Link grumbled, burying his face in Gan’s shirt.

“Don’t have to,” said Gan. “Or clean either. It’s the city. We  _ pay _ people to do that.”

“Miser one day, spendthrift the next,” said Link into his shirt.

Gan shrugged. “A meat pie and a bit of cake isn’t going to make enough difference to matter. Might as well start the day with good things if we’re going to spend the rest of it stuck bargaining and cheapening in the crowded streets.”

Link only groaned.

“If you’re set on being a layabout today I could just  _ carry _ you to the cake shop,” teased Gan, prodding his side.

“It’s too early for cake,” grumped Link, pushing himself upright and grinding his fists against his eyes.

“It’s  _ never _ too early for cake. But I’m sure they sell other, less interesting things,” said Gan, folding his hands behind his head. “I bet I can get you Romani milk tonight too, once the bar opens. But you gotta go with me to the market first.”

“Nah, they only serve grownups,” said Link.

Gan snorted. “Somehow I suspect being taller than the door is plenty of both  _ grown _ and  _ up _ to persuade them.”

Link shrugged, picking up his overtunic from the floor. “You’ve got a hand or two still to go. Anyways in this body they barely believe I’m old enough to go outside the walls even when I have the sword on. I don’t have the right mask to get booze this way. It’s fine.”

Gan stared at his thin back, wondering what he meant about bodies. “They  _ are _ pretty weird about masks in this city.”

“Yeah,” said Link with a shrug. “I forget which ones I left here. We should check that first, and then go to the market.”

“Cake first,  _ then _ masks,” said Gan, rolling out of bed and grabbing his long vest from the pegs behind the door.

The bakery in the clocktower square wasn’t as good as he remembered, but a couple fat red rupee bought enough sausage-and-cheese bread to make even  _ his _ stomach quiet, and four little fried cakes dusted with spicebark and sugar. As soon as they finished eating, Link insisted on traipsing across the city to a square somewhat north of their inn. He poked around between buildings, clambering over crates haphazardly piled in the alleys until he found the dark and stinking gutterway he was apparently looking for. 

Not that he bothered to explain, or remember that maybe Gan couldn’t easily follow in such a small space. A passing guard tried to make trouble while he was struggling to deadclimb rough stonework that would have been a simple matter nine years ago, but only until she got close enough to realize he was half again her height. She rambled something about piracy being illegal inside the town walls and ‘let him go’ with a warning.

Eventually he managed to get past the worst of the trash and find Link’s footprints in the mud. He squeezed around tight corners and clambered over rubble until the trail ended at an overgrown garden wall. Ironvine and thorns tumbled over the rotting stucco, and the arched gate hung akimbo from rusted hinges. Something about that gate nagged at his memory, but with all the leaves choking this path he’d lost Link’s trail. He chewed his lip, and decided to duck through the gate arch, just to see.

Gan stood in the middle of the abandoned garden path, staring at an eerily familiar burned-out shell of a house, breakfast turned to stone in his gut. Clocktown teemed with vibrant life, overcrowded and sprawling. But within the crumbling walls of this forgotten corner, nothing had changed except the season.

Link stood in the tall grass beside the lightning-struck oak tree, jabbing his walking stick into a mound of soft dirt, oblivious to the world. 

Gan paced along the overgrown paths, absorbing details he’d missed on that solstice night. Blood-red brambleflowers on a weathered trellis. A forest of asparagus inside a rotting wattle fence. Drunken rows of leeks and wilting onions, a dozen kinds of safflina along the walls, going to seed. Thistles under gaping windows. Juniper pushing its way through the ruined wall to either side of the charred back door. The transom above had long since shattered, but the heavy maple slab itself with its rusty wrought iron latchset still stood in mute and fruitless guard. “Is this - your house?”

Link shrugged. “Sometimes. I don’t like people anymore either.”

Gan shivered. “What happened here? When?”

“Bad things. I don’t want to talk about it,” said Link.

“I don’t think we should be here,” whispered Gan, his ears ringing with the cry of restless spirits. He’d almost forgotten what it was like, walking among the unhallowed dead. Once, the voices of the dead had been familiar as his books, and he’d learned well their various moods. Some were dangerous, some were clever, some couldn’t hold a single thought any better than a butterfly. Just like people. 

The background noise of the storm headaches and the wicked rage corrupting his blood were nothing to the muffled screams and wails of the lost ones somewhere under the ash and rubble of that ruin. The magic whispered to him of great power hidden there. Energy to be harnessed in those vengeful spirits. Secrets buried in this haunted ground.

“Not yet - I’ve almost got the riddle solved. Just another minute,” said Link, his tone weirdly flat and hollow.

“We can come back tomorrow. I don’t think it’s going anywhere,” said Gan, backing away from the iron cellar door with its heavy spiked padlock. He’d studied locks just like that, years ago. 

“It’s ok,” said Link, hitting something solid in the dirt with his stick. “There were bad things in the before, but no one comes here now.”

Gan swallowed his uneasiness long enough to help him lever the rusty iron chest out of the hole in hopes of getting them both out of the haunted garden as quickly as possible. The cries of the spirits followed him through the streets as they dragged the heavy cache back to the inn.  _ Why didn’t you save  _ **_me_ ** , they wanted to know.  _ Where is  _ **_my_ ** _ hero? When will you come back to save  _ **_me_ ** _? What did  _ **_I_ ** _ ever do to offend the gods?  _

The lock and hinges both proved to be rusted shut, and at length Gan persuaded Link to let it be until morning. The doorman at the tavern tried to turn Link away at first, but a casual inquiry about the man’s opinions of little people and any particular issues with his big brother put a stop to that. The noise of the tavern drowned out the voices, mostly. He didn’t remember the spirits being quite so desperate here before - but he hadn’t really been  _ trying _ to listen for them, either. 

The serving girl trembled her way to the table and whispered the evening specials. She barely managed to take their order, even after Gan slid her an extra yellow rupee. She kept looking up at his eyes, squeaking, and cowering beside their table as if she couldn’t even remember how to run away. Link tried to ask her for a drink, but she said if she got caught giving him booze, she’d be fired. The fact the doorman was persuaded mattered not at all to her. So Gan ordered for both of them, and a basket of cheesebread and smoked sausages too.

“This city’s a lot dirtier than I remember,” said Gan after she fled back to the kitchen. He cracked a few stonenuts in his fist, picking through the shards for savory morsels to share.

Link shrugged. “Snow covers many things.”

“Creepy bastard,” said Gan after a moment, watching him make square rank-and-file patterns with the stonenut shell fragments. 

When the serving girl finally brought the precious Romani milk and hard cider to the table, Link roused from his woolgathering enough to giggle at her fumbling.

“It’s unkind to laugh at someone frightened out of their wits,” said a dark-haired stranger at the next table. 

“Mind your own threads,” rumbled Gan, wondering where the man learned the desert tongue when no one else in this city seemed to know it. He seemed comfortable enough speaking it too, even if his accent introduced weird lilts where there should never be any, lingering over the wrong parts of words.

The stranger calmly sipped his beer, nodding toward Link, who’d already drained half the fermented milk. “Anyone old enough for the drinks here is old enough to speak for himself.”

Link looked the opposite direction, his narrow jaw set at a stubborn angle.

“A pity Nayru never smiled on you,” said Gan with a disdainful click of his tongue. “Pick on someone your own size or keep your little  _ opinions _ to yourself.”

The stranger met his eye without fear, tilting his head in mild curiosity. “Or else what, son of thieves?”

Gan set his cider down and stood, raking his eyes over the man. He wore no weapons, and his clothing was good - a deceptively simple linen shirt in the high-collared Terminan fashion under a deep blue waistcoat. Both garments were embroidered at the edges with a pattern of thornberry and potato leaves in onion gold. Yet his hands were broad, his fingers blunted, and his body honed by a lifetime of hard labor. 

The man just watched him, sipping at his beer as if he challenged giants every day for fun.

“Meddling busybodies like you are half the reason my friend and I left your miserable country in the first place,” said Gan, cracking his knuckles. 

“I thought I overheard you claim you two outlanders were related in - some fashion,” said the man with a significant glance at Link.

Link said nothing, and Gan didn’t turn to see if he had any other reaction. His reticent moods had become almost entirely opaque since he returned from wherever the warrior spirit’s invocation had taken him. Not  _ quite _ as bad as after a hunt - but not that much better either.

“Funny, because I thought  _ I _ overheard you saying you were the son of a shit-eating street cur,” said Gan, stalking around the table to loom over him. “But I know how to keep my tongue behind my teeth when something doesn’t concern me,  _ farmboy _ .”

The man laughed, short and sharp. “Pity Farore’s grace never taught you to extend the same laws to kith or kin or whatever you are to him. You let that boy magnify the troubles of a powerless miss and not a word in her defense, but you’ll bestir yourself to guard his cruelty from comment?”

Gan wound his fist in the man’s clothing and hauled him up off his bench until he could growl directly into the man’s face. “You want to see cruelty? Keep talking.”

The rest of the room fell silent. 

“If you wanted to do it, you wouldn’t be wasting your wind on words either,” said the man with a lopsided grin. “Name’s Ensren. Pleasure to meet you, mister-?”

“Hn,” said Gan, pulling the man close to murmur in his ear. “Ganondorf Dragmire.”

“Din’s fires, but that’s a hell of a name for a young man,” said Ensren, clapping his shoulder like he wasn’t dangling over a foot off the ground. “Put me down and the next round’s on me. Seems you boys could use it.”


	38. Chapter 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T - 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content note at the bottom

Spring came early, blurring the edges of a surprisingly mild winter in the eleventh year of peace in this time. Or - what passed for peace. Far away from their remote sanctuary, the Hylian civil war dragged on in fits and starts as always, but at least there didn’t seem to be any reports of novel atrocities in the east. Only regrettably common ones. 

Link crawled forward to scrape down the next section of the coop and tried not to think about it too much. 

Ensren said war was almost as old as people. He said Gan was right about demons, that being dangerous for people didn’t  _ necessarily _ make them evil. That people were perfectly capable of inventing their own evil, without any demons around at all. That many stories of demon curses could as easily be stories of people being afraid, being too ready to blame someone else for bad weather or sickness or misfortune.

He also agreed the demon in the ancient ship’s books probably connected to Ganon somehow. 

Ensren was clever, and read many hard books. He wasn’t afraid of anything, not even blasphemy. Yet he  _ believed _ in gods and spirits and demons - just not the same way as priests. He believed legends held seeds of truth, but he also believed the stories of an ancient era of perfect peace were in truth a distorted memory of an era of bondage. A time when people not only couldn’t refuse their creators’ commands, but couldn’t imagine doing so. He believed the myth of a war among the gods, and he believed free will was stronger than fate, and made mortals stronger than the gods and spirits in all the ways that mattered most. He believed that freedom was hard, but worth the pain and the sorrow and uncertainty and the hard work of figuring out puzzles and pulling through hard places without relying on the gods or spirits to take care of them.

Link wasn’t sure what he believed anymore.

The  _ goats _ believed he was always hiding more food in his pockets, and the cucco believed anything he touched might be food, or hiding food, or might  _ become _ food if they made enough noise about it. He could have closed them in the hold until he was done cleaning the coop and the forward pens, but he didn’t mind if the work took a  _ little _ longer. Things were easier to bear when he had a clear task to focus on.

Anyways the cucco tolerated being confined at night far better when they could wander the decks freely during the day. And he always felt a little guilty that their goats never had room to run anymore. Without the ocarina and shard together, he couldn’t take them out to the grazing islands. Letting them climb on everything and wander the ship itself whenever possible was the least he could do for them. Even when they tracked filth all over the deck and kept trying to knock him over. The animals never mobbed Gan like this, but maybe they could sense the darkness coiled around his heart. 

Or maybe it was enough that he was so damn  _ big _ now. He had to be at least a head taller than any other Gerudo, and if he was not yet full height, he would be soon. It was hard to tell, since he wasn’t putting muscle on like usual, and in this body Link stood  _ maybe _ two-thirds as tall if he remembered not to slouch.

Not that  _ he’d _ ever get to be tall, even if they made it to the other side of destiny. If there was one. Just three more years until a young king with evil eyes once knelt in Hyrule castle. Ten until his last breath had brought it down around them.

But the eternal plunge into disaster could also have begun only last year, or the one before that, or eight years ago, or eleven, or seventeen, or tomorrow, or now. He’d persuaded Rajenaya to leave his wicked mothers, to at least try to cultivate the goodness and light in his soul, but still he chose to wear the name of evil. To nurture violence and greed and hate in his heart.

Without Ganondorf in the world to unite the demon factions and lawless mortals against the Light, so many other smaller evils rose on every side, too numerous to fight. Their chaos would corrupt everything good and right, and the guardians would go mad when he took their treasures to the temple, and the sword would refuse him and Zelda would vanish into the sacred realm and-

“ _ Enough _ ,” he told the spring morning. “Those days are over. He’s learned how to be kind and benevolent before. His human side  _ must be _ capable of love and virtue and goodness - the gods  _ must _ know. They  _ must _ see. They saved him once before - he must have done  _ something _ bad in secret last time where they couldn’t. That’s all. We were close before. I will  _ make _ it work this time.”

The morning gave no answer.

One of the goats nuzzled against his leg. He scratched her ears until she decided to piss on his boots. Not that he wasn’t already filthy, but that was just too much. He pushed her away with a blistering oath and finished shoveling crap off the deck and through the timeveil, narrowing his focus to nothing but the next heap, the next lift and turn and heave.

He pulled his boots off and dumped a bucket of water in and over them. He’d need to scrub them, but he could tend that while he washed the deck. Later.  _ After _ he sluiced the worst off himself and found a cleaner pair of old trousers so he wouldn’t undo his own work.

Except the washroom door was locked.

Link hammered on the heavy door. “Gan - are you  _ still _ in there?”

Nothing.

Link swallowed hard and unfastened his belt so he could use the clasp to wriggle into the lock. A couple tumblers clicked, but the handle still wouldn’t move. He rammed his shoulder against it. The remaining lockpins screamed, but didn’t give. “Gan-! This isn’t funny - open the goddamn door.”

“Go  _ away _ ,” shouted Gan from the other side.

Link sagged against the indifferent metal, willing his racing heart to calm itself.  _ Alive. Everything is fine. Alive. Just being selfish. Only a small sin. Alive.  _ “Gan. Come on - you’ve been in there all morning. You’re gonna use up all the water. Again.”

“I don’t care. Go piss in the swamp or something,” Gan shouted back.

“Don’t be stubborn - let me in already. You’ve  _ had _ your shower. It’s my turn,” said Link.

“You can either wait till I’m done or go wash in a bucket, I  _ literally _ do not care which as long as you  _ go away _ ,” said Gan.

“I won’t,” said Link. “ _ Why _ are you taking forever? It’s been  _ hours _ . I scraped the coop  _ and _ the pens  _ and _ the whole deck while you’ve done nothing but laze in the water?”

“None of your business. Go  _ away _ ,” said Gan.

“Is too my business when you’re hogging the bath all damn morning,” said Link, wondering if he should break the lock. 

“If you don’t leave me  _ alone _ I will steal every single one of your pillows and I  _ won’t _ give them back,” shouted Gan.

“Why are you being such a jerk today? Let me in already so I can wash,” pleaded Link.

No answer.

Link hammered on the door a few more times and still nothing. So he broke the prong on his belt trying to pick the lock. Gan continued to ignore him. Link tracked filth through the hall and the kitchen looking for better tools and after another half hour  _ finally _ the lock gave way under his hand. 

Gan swore as he pushed the door open, scrambling to wrap a second bath sheet around himself right where he sat before the cracked mirror. “Godsfuckingdamnit Link, have you  _ no _ respect for privacy?”

“You’ve  _ had _ privacy  _ all morning _ ,” groaned Link, leaving the ruined fork behind in the lock. “You’re not even  _ in _ the bath - why couldn’t you open the door?”

“Because I didn’t want you in here? You consider that? Get  _ out _ ,” snarled Gan, hunched over on his fat floor cushion and bundled in damp cloth. He’d dragged a bench in to serve as a table between himself and the mirror, and half a dozen beeswax tapers burned in clay cups upon it. 

“What are you doing? What are you hiding Gan? Are you ok? I can’t help you if you lock yourself away,” said Link, padding closer, holding up his empty hands so Gan could see it was safe. Assuming he looked up. But he didn’t. He just sat under the heavy bath sheets, covering his face with one of the old blue towels Idrea made for them in the last time.

To be fair, the soft cloth  _ was _ comforting, and washing it with memoryleaf and spicewood oil in the water the way she’d taught him meant it still smelled of home even after all these years. 

Not that Gan knew about any of that. 

“Nothing. I’m fine. Just go. Please,” said Gan, his deep voice muffled by the cloth.

“That doesn’t sound like nothing,” said Link, rubbing his hands on his less-filthy shirt before daring to touch Gan’s shoulder.

Gan sighed. “You stink.”

“Well,  _ yeah _ . I’ve been cleaning the deck. I told you. I need a bath,” said Link, frowning. 

Gan gestured impatiently, shooing him away. “Fine - go wash up before you track shit everywhere, I don’t care. Just - leave me alone and  _ stop staring _ .”

“But what’s  _ wrong _ Gan? I don’t understand,” said Link, trying to peer over his hunched shoulders to see what else was on the bench. Candles. Snarls of string. A little penknife. A bobbin of more string.

Gan pushed him away with a growl. “I don’t want your stinking  _ help _ . Especially the stinking part. Go - elsewhere. What did you  _ do _ ? Yeesh.”

“If you weren’t so stubborn I’d already be clean by now,” said Link, stepping back. “The goats were being cranky. They don’t do as well cooped up on the ship.”

“They’ve always been - oh. Wait,” said Gan, lifting his head. His golden eyes caught the candlelight enough to shine in the mirror even with the sheet over his head. “You used the flute. To take them outside. Before.”

“Yeah,” said Link, averting his eyes. “I’m just - gonna wash up. Ok? Don’t go anywhere. Or do anything stupid. I’ll be quick.”

Gan just groaned and buried his face in the blue towel in his massive hands. He muttered something under his breath, too muffled to make out, but he stayed put. So Link hurried to strip off his filthy clothes, kicking them into the far corner while he stood under the sluicegate to scrub down. He found the other blue towel to wrap himself in, and still Gan neither moved nor spoke.

Link padded over next to him, laying a tentative - but now clean - hand on his shoulder. “What’s wrong? What happened? Everything seemed ok last night. Did you have a bad dream?”

“Yeah. Something like that. Now go away,” Gan growled, hunching deeper into the towels.

Link frowned. “Why are you lying?”

Gan’s rumbling curses turned into a roar when he tried to pull back the edge of the bath sheet. “ _Stop looking at me!_ It’s because I’m hideous ok? Just - get out and leave me alone.”

“Why is your face all - puffy and red? What are you doing?” Link asked, hauling at the towels anyway. A cloud of little red hairs rose into the air when the cloth snapped taut.

“Din’s fires, why can’t you  _ ever _ back down on  _ anything _ ? Not everything is your damn business,” shouted Gan, throwing down the blue towel and letting go of the big bath sheet around his head and shoulders. He’d tied his long hair back in a single queue without bothering to comb or arrange it first, and his eyes were red around the edges too, glistening at the corners like he’d been crying. But Gan  _ never _ cried, except as a very small child. 

Link dropped the damp sheet and reached to touch his cheek, but Gan pulled away and buried his face in his hands again. “Are you - pulling out your eyebrows or something? Why? Doesn’t that hurt?”

“No, and  _ of course _ it hurts, idiot. You wouldn’t understand, you with your perfect smooth face that never fucking changes,” growled Gan.

Link frowned, stroking his damp hair and his bowed shoulder, trying to coax him out of hiding. “What do you mean? My face changes all the time. Look at me - why would you ever say you’re hideous? What’s  _ really _ wrong? What happened?”

“Nothing  _ happened _ . Look,” said Gan with a long-suffering sigh, gesturing at the mirror and averting his gaze. “Every damn day it’s worse. I can  _ never _ get it all.”

“I don’t see anything but you,” said Link, baffled. 

Gan said nothing, hands hanging limp over the ledge of his knees, fingers still tangled in a loop of string.

“Talk to me,” said Link, cupping his hands under Gan’s jaw, coaxing him to turn his head. “I can’t read minds like you. I don’t know what’s wrong unless you tell me.”

Gan snorted. “I can’t read minds.”

“Tsk. You shouldn’t lie. It’s a bad habit,” said Link, mimicking Ensren’s dry tone in hopes of provoking a laugh. 

But Gan remained serious, his deep voice vibrating under Link’s fingers. “I haven’t ever been able to listen to your spirit. Not like that. Until we went back to Clocktown I thought spirit eyes only worked with my people.”

Link frowned. “But you - saw my dreams. You knew things I never said. Even without magic - you could touch my face and  _ see _ things.”

“Not in this life,” murmured Gan, meeting his eye. “Sometimes I wish I could. But I think about how you scream in your sleep when I’m not there to shake you out of it, and then I don’t want that spell anymore unless I could  _ take _ the dreams too. But demon magic is pretty much the opposite of that.”

“It couldn’t be a wicked spell. You saw fairies then,” said Link, trying to smile at the memory of a stubborn boy insisting he’d picked the best one. “You were the most powerful sorcerer anyone had ever seen. Lightning-bright. Ambitious. Strong. People are stupid and cowardly, that’s all. They didn’t know you like we did. They were afraid.”

Gan winced. “But not stronger than the shadows, the wickedness, the cursed magic. Not stronger than  _ him _ .”

Link pulled him close, pressing Gan’s ear to his chest and willing him to hear, to see, to hope again. Hope was of the light. He was born in the light. He carried the light somewhere under everything else. If only he would embrace the Light this time. He buried his own nose in Gan’s fiery hair, ignoring the ticklishness of it. It was weird - in every time after the first, whatever he did, whatever soap he used, under it all he always smelled faintly like heat and spices. Maybe in the first too, but he’d never gotten close enough to notice except when Ganondorf was dying under the sacred blade, and he wasn’t really trying to notice  _ anything _ then.

“We were  _ so close  _ Jojo,” he whispered. “Listen - the truth. Do you hear it now? Can you see how much good you have inside you? I’ve seen it. _I know_. I don’t mind if you use that spirit magic if it helps you. Hope is important.”

“I don’t know how,” rumbled Gan.

“We’ll figure it out this time. Together. Just us. I will fix it in this time,” said Link.

“I meant the spell,” said Gan, his voice rough around the edges of the words. “And there’s still the  _ other _ problem. Being ever more huge and ugly and different and oh yeah,  _ incidentally _ also evil incarnate.”

Link groaned, pulling back just enough to make Gan look at him again. “Don’t say mean things like that. Different isn’t  _ bad _ . It just  _ is _ .”

Gan snorted in derision, rolling his eyes. He grasped Link’s hand and rubbed his palm down the side of his face, where a few soft whiskers tickled already. “You feel that?  _ Real _ Gerudo are smooth and slender and pretty. My sisters are all the colors of sand and earth, Din’s children, but  _ look _ at what I become. No matter how hard I try to stop it.”

“What’s wrong with olive and rust colors? I think you look handsome,” said Link. “Why didn’t you  _ say _ you wanted to shave? Just because some people don’t have whiskers doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, if you want to. I don’t, but Ensren does. I bet he’d teach you how shaving works so you don’t have to-”

“Shut up,” said Gan, hunching down to bury his face in his cupped hands again. “Just - shut up, and give me a minute, ok? Go - find pants or something. We’ll talk about it later.  _ Maybe _ . If you shut up  _ now _ .”

“But Gan-” said Link, touching his shoulder, but Gan shrugged him off.

“I said  _ go _ . Please.”

What else could he do? Link went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for dysphoria  
> or  
> In Which Link Does Not Get It


	39. Chapter 39

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T - 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting early this week because bad day, needing cheer. 
> 
> Have some no-longer-very-smols.

Summer brought all the usual heat and soggy air, but a gentle storm rolled through the marsh on solstice eve in the year Ganondorf was nineteen. He lingered on the sandbar, letting the cool rain soak through his shirt, through his braids, feeling the sand turn to clinging muck under his bare feet. He knew he should be hungry - and Link would fuss if he didn’t eat enough of the spiced cucco pie later. 

Gan raised the jar of applejack again, savoring its heat on his tongue. He didn’t crave drink the way Link did - few could - but acquiring a taste for certain spirits numbered among the many changes the years wrought in him. A little bit at the right time was like scouring sand, smoothing the jagged places inside him. Sometimes it actually helped him think, blurring out distractions so he could focus on his work.

Gan laughed at his own folly, idling in the rain until Link came to the rail of their ship to tell him the tea was ready. He didn’t really want tea, but it was a good excuse to avoid his project a little longer. Even though the jewelry forge was tiny, and as well-shielded as he could make it, fire would never be pleasant to labor over in summer. 

Casting a dozen more bloodsteel rings could wait. After all, once the sun set it would be his birthday. Link always said birthdays were supposed to be nice. What was nice about sweating over forge and anvil for hours on end in hopes that maybe  _ this _ pattern would prove more effective than the last?

Link helped him squeeze most of the water from his long braids and brought the tea up to the ancient captain’s cabin. Gan poured and sweetened the tea as Link dragged out the last bag of indigo-dyed goat’s curls. He drank maybe half his cup before he lost himself in fluffing out a handful and spinning the curls into smooth, strong yarn exactly the color of his eyes. Gan lounged in the deep window seat, reading aloud the next chapter in the frivolous - and probably fictional - pastoral adventures of a celebrated singer from the western coast.

A soft breeze rose at twilight, whispering through the woven screens they’d made a few years ago to cool the room in summer. They sat in silence a while after he finished the chapter. He didn’t much care what happened next in the story, and Link gave no indication he did either. 

“Let’s move the looms and sleep up here tonight,” said Gan at last. 

“It’ll be bright though. You don’t like getting up early,” said Link, winding another ell of perfect yarn onto his spindle.

Gan shrugged. “I don’t like sweating all over my pillow either. Anyways, we’ll need an early start for braiding my hair.”

Link tipped his head in thought. “But I only finished those snake braids four days ago. They look fine. Did I not get enough oil in between last night?”

“You did, but I was out in the rain,” said Gan with a wry grin, tracing the edge of the pages with his fingers. “Anyways this pattern isn’t any cooler than spinebraids after all. So let’s do a plain three-into-three instead.”

Link raised a brow, walking the spindle up to his hand again. “Then it has to come down tonight, or it’ll be too bouncy and tangly tomorrow. And you’ll have to remember to tie a scarf over it every night or it’ll have to be done fresh.”

“Hn,” said Gan, opening the book again to run the corner of the remaining pages under his thumb. “We’ve about twenty chapters left. That’s what - ten days of braids?”

Link groaned and made a face.

Gan laughed, moving to the floor cushion under the window seat while Link set aside his work to fetch the combs. He teased Gan about his fickle habits, but he grinned when he said it. He liked to be busy all the time anyway, and he was good at braiding. Sometimes it seemed to help him sleep easier too, when Gan let him help arrange his hair for the night. Even if just to plait smaller braids into one fat rope so he wouldn’t roll over on it. 

It was a small, nice thing, the combs pulling through smoothly without having to twist around to do it himself. A good thing, Link’s skilled fingers in his hair. Working oil into the curls, against his scalp. A safe thing, to press his back against the smooth wood of the seat, Link’s knees against his shoulders as he slipped his small hands under the braids, brushing the back of his neck, dividing the weight across his lap.

“You sure? Take them all out?” Link spoke softly, tracing one plait with his warm fingers, untangling it from the rest. “I could do a three-in-three with it like this. If you want.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” rumbled Gan.

Gan turned pages without seeing them as Link’s nimble fingers unraveled the first plait and smoothed it down. After all, birthdays were supposed to be nice.


	40. Chapter 40

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T - 0

Another autumn gilded the trees, but Link took no pleasure in it the year Gan turned twenty. More monsters challenged the marsh every month, and deku baba sprouted up on half the little islands.

It didn’t make sense.

Rumors from Hyrule weren’t any different than before. Gan was keeping himself busy with his chain-weaving experiments. Everything was fine. Fourteen years of time unreeling without his hand in it more than absolutely necessary, and nothing happened.

Except.

He was having the dream again.

He dug out the All Night Mask the second time it came to him in the middle of the day. Gan hated that mask, so he had to wear a hood pulled forward to hide it when he felt himself start to slip.

Somehow staying close to Gan seemed to keep the dream away. Where Link could listen to his Rajo alive again, swearing at his tools, ordering fragile spell-forged metal to obey him, grumbling at his books and notes. Where he could look at Gan’s sharp features and be reassured his eyes were still richly gold, not wicked red and sickly yellow. Where he could find an excuse to touch his unbroken dark skin and know he wasn’t dreaming.

“Hey. You’re too close to the mould - get back or you’re gonna get burned,” snapped Gan.

“Sorry,” said Link, going back to the bench by the other worktable and locking his hands around the edge. That was the trouble - or, one of the troubles - with the all-night mask. The longer he wore it, the harder it became to stay connected to this body, this place. He kept finding himself on his feet with no memory of having moved.

Gan swore under his breath, pouring molten metal into the strange box of wax and wet sand. Link wasn’t sure what he was making this time, only that it involved melting down a _lot_ of copper and silver and steel. Which was fine. It kept him busy. Gan liked to be busy.

“Hey. Don’t touch that,” snapped Gan, slapping his hand away from the neat line of shining tools. “Those are still too hot for you. Go stand over _there_ while I get the forge banked, ok? Count to a hundred or something and stop getting underfoot.”

“Sorry,” said Link. He tried to do as Gan asked, but he kept losing count when the red forgelight reflected against Gan’s dark skin.

“Hey. Short stuff. The hell’s under your skin today? You wearing that horrible contraption aga- ew. Godsdamnit Link, it’s _not good_ to keep wearing that thing. You’re bleeding again and it’s _going_ to get infected if you don’t listen to me,” growled Gan, hunched over and dropped to one knee to meet his eye.

“Nothing,” said Link, staring at his boots. They looked strange to him, in one breath like they weren’t quite touching the floor, and in the next as if he was sinking down through the ancient steel.

Gan grunted, dropping a heavy hand on his shoulder. “This doesn’t look like nothing. Tell me the truth. Why are you afraid to fall asleep this time? What happened?”

“Nothing,” said Link, shaking his head. He pulled the mask off, blinking painfully dry eyes and wondering why the insides of his head felt itchy. “I’m not afraid of you or anything. It’s just - the year it would have. And it was autumn when the - strange things in the forest and - the great deku and-”

“You have a fever,” interrupted Gan, pressing the back of his hand against Link’s brow. “When did this start?”

“I don’t know,” said Link, turning the mask over in his hands, prodding the black filigree thorns that helped keep him awake so he wouldn’t see Hyrule burning behind his eyes. “Everything was always the same in the village, but on the outside it was gold and leaves falling but they said the trees were only sleeping but it was green at the castle and I had to climb or they yelled at me worse than Mido and-”

“Shh. It’s ok. You’re not in that time anymore. You don’t have to remember if you don’t want to. I was asking about the _fever_ ,” rumbled Gan, brushing his hair out of his face the same way Idrea used to.

“I feel fine,” Link shrugged. “I just - don’t want you going anywhere when I’m asleep, and I don’t want to dream.”

Gan frowned. “So it’s not just falling through fog anymore. Tell me how it’s changed.”

“Well - at night it _is_ still the same. Falling and fog and singing that turns into a shout and then I wake up with the insides of my head itching and little tiny itchy lightnings inside my right hand,” said Link with a shrug.

“Tell me about the song,” said Gan, kneading his shoulder.

“I don’t know,” said Link, pressing his thumb into the mask’s thorns and feeling dizzy. “The shouting is the same as always. Something _will_ , and _blood_ , and _no more_. The song doesn’t make sense. Thunderstones and blades and a tyrant’s stroke, whatever that means. ”

“It either means a whip or the use of one” said Gan, frowning deeper. “A tyrant is just someone with absolute power over someone else, and stroke means to - touch something in a direction. Like a scourge or a whip, when you let the cable lay across the skin to make the pain go deep without leaving scars, instead of snapping the tip to draw blood.”

“Why do you even know that?” Link looked Gan in the eye as he asked, though he was afraid he already knew the answer. The twin witches were not nice people.

“A lesson from long ago,” he said with a shrug, as if his pain didn’t matter. As if his obsession with being untouchable wasn’t another stone on the scales. “Thunderstone is just flint. But if the triad meant _fire_ , the third image would be something that could burn. Wood or paper or straw. The shout sounds like it’s a seal of some kind. The end of a spell. For most things, _will_ is enough, but blood magic is immensely powerful. You said once it feels like you’re looking for something lost or important in this dream. So it could be a - poetic way of remembering your life before you learned the blue magic. Or if the seal goes with the triad in the song you hear, it could be you’re remembering a locking or shield spell directed at the thing the triad describes. Maybe the new dream is just another part of it.”

Link shook his head. “It’s not a new dream. It’s the _old_ one. From the before of the first. Before I ever saw you for real. Before the strange things and the bad things and I don’t want to talk about it.”

Gan sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. He scrubbed his face and shook his head, staring at Link with frightening intensity. “ _The year it would have happened_. So we’ve caught up to the place you stepped out of the river of your own time. You think it’s going to happen again. That everything I’ve done to unravel the fucking prophecy is all for nothing.”

Link couldn’t make his tongue work.

Gan blew a tight breath through his nose and pushed to his feet. “I don’t know if this experimental bullshit is going to do what I want. But I think there’s something else that will. The ancient captain never wrote about it directly, but I’m pretty sure that they hid whatever it is somewhere in what is now central Hyrule and _that_ will be capable of manifesting _literally_ anything.”

“No,” breathed Link. _The evil man ceaselessly uses his vile, sorcerous powers in his search for the Sacred Realm, where one will find the divine relic..._

“Stay put,” said Gan, stalking past him down the hall and climbing the steps three at a time.

Link gathered his wits and hurried after him, but the stairs seemed to go on forever and he had to keep stopping to catch his wind.

“You don’t listen any better than the hens,” said Gan from the shadows when he reached the deck. When had the sun set? It had been morning just a minute ago. “Promise me this. If you can’t find it in the places I’ve marked in these notes, you’ll find a way to let me know before you go back.”

Link blinked up at him, baffled.

Gan stepped forward, moonlight reflecting in his golden eyes. “ _Promise_.”

“Gan - I don’t understand. What are you talking about? What’s happening to you-?”  
  
“You have to promise me. It’s the rules,” said Gan, and his teeth shone in the darkness when he smiled, wicked sharp.

“No - not again - please Gan, don’t listen to the shadows,” said Link grasping the top of the stair rail so hard his bones ached.

Gan stared down at him in the quiet autumn midnight, and after an eternity of silence, opened his fist. The translucent blue ocarina glowed softly in his massive palm, and he offered it without another word. His sharp sardonic grin never faltered, even as the shadows closed over them both.

Falling.

  
Roaring darkness.

Slippery smothering silence.

Blood.   


Brilliant crashing light and a teasingly familiar song rolling through him like distant thunder.

 

_Be light of heart-_

 

Strong hands wrapping around him in the dizzy spangled void.

 

_No shadow shall harm thee-_


	41. Chapter 41

_ How did you know I’m a prince? _

_ I’ve seen you before, in the tomorrows. Bad things happened there, so I ran away.  _

“What terrible things I must have done to you  in those times,” whispered Ganondorf, brushing his thumb across Link’s pale brow, smoothing back his fine golden hair. Two days unconscious, and he still barely even stirred, so deep was his exhaustion. At least this gave the healing potion time to work. The swelling and redness receded from his pale skin, though a hundred tiny wounds preserved the pattern of thorns from the inside of the hideous black filigree mask.

_ It is all forgotten now.  _

“Is it though? You are fearless in every other thing - but you hurt yourself again and again, refusing to eat, to sleep, to share the burden of feeding us and defending our home - as if your suffering will prevent me from becoming that monster while your back is turned,” murmured Gan to his sleeping friend. “Going back up the river of time only unraveled the calamity for  _ us _ . It’s still real for  _ you _ . I’ve always wondered how you can bear to live with your enemy. To be kind and gentle to an absolute fiend. It eats at you from the inside though, doesn’t it? Living in this oasis of Light just isn’t enough to erase the memories of everything we’ve run from, isn’t enough to change what I am.”

_ There is more magic in this world than you’ve yet dreamed, desert prince. This time will be different. _

Gan sighed, slouching deeper into the pillows, resting his head against the cold wall. Link twitched an ear and his arm flexed around Gan’s knee, then subsided. His breathing remained slow and shallow, his small frame unusually warm curled against Gan’s thigh. Maybe because of fever - though Link had never yet fallen ill in fourteen years - or maybe because they’d finally caught up to the place he’d walked out of the river of time to dance himself into a faraway land and fates woven before he was even born.

_ What if you’re wrong? What if the spirit’s meddling makes it all happen faster? _

“But it didn’t. We made it to the year the first disaster began.  _ He _ hasn’t won yet in this time,” whispered Gan to his younger self. He closed his eyes, and thought about laying down again. He hadn’t done any real work since Link collapsed in his arms, just feeding the cucco and making sure the kettle was always full. He bribed his own stomach to wait just a little longer with a handful of dried fruit and nuts from the little clay pot on the nightstand. 

_ How old were you when you saw me before? _

_ Twelve, I think.  _

_ How old was I? _

_ Big. _

“What cruel god sent a  _ child _ against a grown man? A sorcerous warlord commanding legions of thieves and warriors and demons? Even with your blue time magic you wouldn’t have the smallest chance against the king of all evil,” murmured Gan, vainly willing the burning knot in his throat to subside. “Alone too, weren’t you? An orphan maybe, since you don’t even know how old you were. You’re so small for twelve, even for a Hylian, and  _ still _ nearly half feral after how many long years running from the demands of the distant gods?”

_ It is the year it would have happened, in the first time, before I ever saw you for real. I left the forest in autumn... _

“What did you dream of me, little hero?” Gan cupped Link’s shoulder and resisted the temptation to gather him into his arms like a lost kitten. Link hated it when Gan picked him up, hated to be reminded of his small stature. He remained fiercely self-reliant and stubborn, year after year. He insisted Gan accept  _ his _ help, but tolerated almost none himself. 

Link sighed in his sleep and mashed his face harder against Gan’s heavy thigh, his arms winding tight around his knee again. “Stay. Goo’ pillow.”

Gan’s chest constricted painfully. “Who would have guessed the savior of Hyrule would be such a sleepyhead?”

Link stirred again, cracking one blue eye open blearily. He frowned, and plucked at a loose fold of creamy homespun cloth under his hand like the texture of it would tell him something.

“It’s ok - I was just teasing. You don’t have to get up yet,” rumbled Gan.

“Nnrf,” said Link, scrunching his pale face. “Wha’ppen?”

“A nap-monster snuck up on you,” said Gan, forcing a grin. “Stealthy things, those. Hungry?”

“Nuh,” said Link, tucking his face against Gan’s leg again, his whole body a knot of nervous tension. 

“I have tea brewed if you want some. Not very hot anymore, but I can make fresh.”

“Nuh. Float ‘way,” mumbled Link into the soft homespun cloth.

“Fair. Think you can stay awake long enough to get to the washroom on your own?”

Link scowled up at him. 

“Suit yourself. Just don’t think about rivers or waterfalls or rain or-”

Link thunked his knee in exactly the right place to make his nerves jangle all out of proportion with the strike. “Hate you.”

Gan just grinned and offered his hand as leverage to rise.

Gan set a couple handfuls of sliced apples and crushed stonenuts on the little corner stove to stew in a slurry of honey and spicebark and red wine. By the time Link returned to the bedroom, the tea was almost done and the apples golden.

Link loved apples. But all he said was, “Why you doin’ this?”

Gan shrugged, stirring honey into both mugs, small and large. “Why you have such a horrible mask?”

Link scowled, but he did accept the mug. A good sign. “What’s that to do with anything?”

Gan prodded the apples.  _ Not yet soft enough. _ “Curiosity, for one. Where’d you get it? What’s it supposed to be for?”

“Staying awake when I need to,” said Link, perching on the end of the bed and drawing his knees up to his chest as he cooled his tea with his breath. “In the tomorrows when the moon would fall, the one who sells stolen things would have things the bad thief stole from the old woman, but I stopped him for good, and then when the hurting one is dancing down the moon he lets me take it away if I brought him all the rupee I could carry.”

“You paíd a king’s ransom for a torture device at a black market fence after you killed one of his suppliers,” said Gan, mostly to himself. It didn’t make the idea any easier to grasp. 

“I had to. Bad things,” said Link to his mug. “Is complicated, stopping thieves and monsters and wicked curses. Some things so awful the hero have to do bad things to save people from it.”

_ Bad things happened there, so I ran away.  _

_ The war was very bad in that time.  _

_ You mean, you were told to kill people, don’t you? When you say ‘bad things’ - you’re talking about death.  _ Gan scooped stewed apples into a wide clay bowl. “Fair enough.”

“My turn,” grumped Link when Gan tried to hand him the apples. “What’s all the nice for?”

“Hn,” said Gan, folding himself in descending lotus at his side. He ate an apple slice with deliberate flourish while he considered his answer. “Nice is about doing what someone else wants you to do for them. If I were a nice person, a  _ lot _ of things would be different. But I’m not, so here we are, and you’re doing things  _ I _ don’t like, so the only possible course for a selfish bastard like me is to get in your way and make you do what  _ I _ want instead.”

Link scowled at him.

Gan speared another apple slice, wafting it under Link’s stubborn little nose.

Link glared harder.

Gan leaned in and ate the apple slice himself with a sardonic grin.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” grumbled Link, accepting the empty fork. Challenge persuaded him more easily than reason. “How is it selfish for  _ you _ to make food for  _ me _ ? What does it matter to  _ you _ if _ I  _ don’t want to sleep? Is this some kind of riddle?”

Gan shrugged, affecting a nonchalance that seemed to get harder to manage every year. “Demons don’t have to make sense.”

“Stop saying that. I don’t like it. I know what demons are like, and you’re  _ not _ ,” Link snapped, stabbing at the innocent apples to punctuate his objections.

Gan cradled his tea in his lap, staring at his own blurry, distorted reflection. “You’re having the dream for a reason.”

“Gan-”

“If this is the year it began, there’s a reason for that. There’s nothing special about his chosen host being one year older or younger, so there must be something about this year that makes him stronger,” said Gan softly. “Or something he needs will surface - some leverage, or relic, or there’s some conjunction of stars that makes  _ now _ so dangerous.”

Link pushed apples around the bowl. “Great Deku sent me to find the Princess of Destiny. The sacred maiden. Zelda. You were looking for her too.”

“Ah,” said Gan. _Choose to walk in the Light and I can change your stars, he said._ _But no star moves alone._ “The great destroyer will have a contingency plan. You’re going to need to be strong to stop it.”

“Why you pushing me away?”

Gan shook his head, meeting those fathomless blue eyes. “I can’t leave this oasis of Light. Especially not right now. But if you can find the ancient relic, we can use that to change destiny. Unravel the prophecy to the beam. Unmake his entire bloody thread.”

“No,” said Link, pushing the bowl aside, his eyes bright with welling tears. “I can’t do it.”

“You can. You’re not doing it alone this time, Link. I packed some things for you a while ago, preserved rations and weapons and things. It’s all in my workroom, with the first functional spell-chains. One for heat, one for cold. The topaz chains won’t be ready for another week, but better anyways if you rest and prepare while I finish those. I don’t know if they’ll do anything of their original purpose, but at the very least they should guard you from any  _ more _ lightning damage than you’ve already got,” said Gan.

Link shook his head in denial. “No, she fixed it all. It is forgotten. I’m fine.”

“You’re  _ not _ fine. You’re hurting yourself worrying  _ he _ will rise to power again. You said yourself the dreams have changed and your head itches with lightning  _ I put there _ . The only rational course is for you to go back to Hyrule and look for the one thing that actually has the power to stop him for good,” said Gan softly, brushing his massive hand over Link’s golden hair.  _ Just - please come back to me before you go upriver again, my light. _


	42. Chapter 42

Brittle winter sunlight sharpened dripping icicles on the roof of the little shrine. One set of footprints crossed the quiet snow blanketing the high east pasture. Three different sets circled the brightly painted shrine, where a man in blue knelt and a boy in gray paced. 

“I don't like it. You shouldn’t have let her paint it,” said the boy.

The man snuffed the lamp, and dumped the cold ashes from the incense holder and the withered scraps from the stone offering bowl into a copper bucket at his side. “Things made of wood need to be protected from the ravages of time and the elements, Vohatyr. It is good and right for people to make offerings according to their talents. My sisters-”

“I don’t care. Make them fix it, Ensren. Take away the green flags too, and that  _ stupid _ velvet,” growled Vohatyr. “Why did you have to build this anyway? You could have just put the chest in the barn like I said.”

“You scream when you change form. It makes the animals unhappy,” said Ensren, folding the embroidered black silk velvet altar cloth. “The prayer flags stay. Life balances order and passion. We honor you Ferocious One, but we will not anger the Three.”

“I don’t care about  _ honor _ . I just need to  _ fix _ it,” said Vohatyr, staring at the painted mask in his hands. “I don’t know how he did it, and he will lie if I wear this face.”

“Too bad. I don’t want war claiming my family,” said Ensren, heaving up the solid oak altar slab, revealing a hollowed-out space beneath. 

“I could have done that,” grumbled the boy, stomping through the snow to place the mask inside the hollow, next to a braided rope of fiery red hair and a short curved pruning knife. 

“You’re going to hurt yourself if you keep insisting on doing everything without help,” said Ensren. 

“You sound like him,” returned Vohatyr, dropping a heavy, jingling little bag in the secret hollow and pushing to his feet.

“Good,” grunted Ensren, returning the polished oak slab to its place. “He cares for you deeply.”   
  
“He  _ cares _ about getting his own way,” snapped Vohatyr. “The only reason he even rejects Ganon in this time is because he can’t stand the idea of not being in charge.”

“I’m not persuaded of that, and I don’t think you are either,” said Ensren, stretching to brush a little snow from the simple white wooden effigy behind the altar. 

“No! Everything is happening again - everything I’ve done and he’s laid his curse on Hyrule anyway, summoning demons and monsters and dead things to try to make me open the holy door. He drew  _ maps _ to the sacred places, brother. How else could he know where they are? I  _ saw _ the stal defiling the fields, the dodongo in the caverns, the sucking parasite in spirit’s belly. She is dreaming the storm from the west again, and everything is horrible.”

“West is a pretty big place.”

“Yeah but  _ he’s _ the storm,” said Vohatyr with a shake of his head, his voice cracking. “He is  _ always _ the storm.”

“Even if the storm in her dream does represent him, that doesn’t mean he’s chosen to do evil in this life, or that he’s responsible for the troubles in Hyrule. Sometimes storms are actually a  _ good _ thing Vohatyr, even if they are frightening. Even if they do some harm in the process. Storms bring  _ change _ . Storm wind fells dead branches to strengthen the forest, storm bolts bring fire to cleanse diseased fields, storm rains restore the rivers.”

“How could monsters ever be a good thing? You didn’t see it. You don’t  _ know _ the terrible things he does. The desert man in black armor stood before the eternal Great Deku and laid a  _ death curse _ on him when he refuses to give him the emerald. He demands the sacred ruby to drive the monsters out of the mines, and he makes the river spirit sick to seize the sapphires.”

“Sacred jewels,” said Ensren to the shrine, running his thumb across an old scar trailing from his lip. “How long did Deku hold Saria’s emerald in your first incarnation before they told you who you were?”

“When the bad things started, Deku hid it for her, to keep it safe from the strange things under the Green,” said Vohatyr, his blue eyes unfocused. “It’s worse and worse, poison spreading, monsters hunting, death curse in fury, bloody greed, ceaseless searching-”

“Very few mortals can thread the wildwood labyrinth,” cut in Ensren. He shook out the black velvet and smoothed it over the altar again as he spoke. “Only children and the pure of heart can speak with fairies and hear spirits and walk freely upon sacred ground.”

“He could have just magicked himself there,” said Vohatyr.

“Can  _ you _ reach the grove by magic in mortal form?” Ensren returned the stone bowl and the clean incense holder and lamp to the altar. 

Vohatyr kicked at the trampled snow. “Not anymore. Not with  _ any _ face.”

“And yet. A grown man entered the wildwood, and walked out alive. Think about it,” said Ensren. He placed a small sealed jar of spirits next to the bowl, and three apples in it.

“No! He was  _ evil _ ! He did  _ bad things _ ,” shouted Vohatyr, pale hands balled into fists. “He tricked them. He used dark magic. He lied. He stole. He killed people. No one ever died in the grove until  _ he _ came.”

Ensren lit the lamp again, his voice soft and everything reasonable. “Except your mother.”

Vohatyr stopped pacing. “What?” 

“You said your mortal mother fled into the forest and gave you to the tree spirits. She had to be amazingly pure of heart to get there,  _ especially _ since she was badly wounded,” said Ensren, setting three little cones of incense alight. “Her love for you, her faith in goodness, her strength and courage to attempt the impossible for the salvation of another unlocked the spirit roads-”

“No-”

“As you were pure until you learned to doubt the virtue of what you’d done,” continued Ensren, rising to his feet again. “As  _ he _  must have been pure and righteous in his desire to reach the sacred realm. The forest closed when you lost your trust in good.”

“If he had  _ ever _ been righteous in that time it wouldn’t have shattered. He couldn’t control the power of the gods-”

“How can you be so certain it was  _ his _ touch that broke the divine relic? What makes his quest for the sacred guardian stones any different than yours?”

“ _ I _ never wanted them! I never wanted any of it! The only thing I ever wished for was a  _ fairy _ of my own until  _ he _ came and ruined everything. Deku only gave me the stone so the Princess would know what happened,” cried Vohatyr.

“And the other two? You know in your heart of hearts the guardians need the sacred stones to focus their powers and maintain balance in their realm,” said Ensren.

Vohatyr roared in frustration and drew out a golden crest set with enormous, flawless blue sapphires. “Then why did Ruto make me take it? In this time? Or else?”

Ensren paled. “You - have to take that back. _Whatever_ her reason. Removing even  _ one _ focus from the place the gods bound it to invites chaos and madness.”

“I can’t unless I stay in the river kingdom with her forever,” said Vohatyr miserably. “I tried dying once to make her take it back. It didn’t work. And I  _ can’t _ go into the forest. I tried in the last time. Bad things happened.”

“If it is fated that the sovereign of your people should open the sacred realm, a champion will rise to aid her,” said Ensren.

“ _ I _ was the hero,” said Vohatyr, thumping his narrow chest. “Long ago tomorrow, in a hard time, I did  _ everything _ she asked of me in the name of the Light.”

“What law of gods or mortals says there can only ever be _one_?”


	43. Chapter 43

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 1

Thump and creak, shuff and fwump, another pick laid across the warp. Thread by thread, hour by hour, the colors of forest and field, earth and rain, light and shadow grew beneath his bright shuttles in the spring before his twenty-first birthday.

A squeak and thud behind him interrupted the steady rhythm of the loom. Ganondorf pulled the golden reed firmly against the weft, waiting through four unsteady heartbeats before he dared speak. “Did you find it?” 

“It’s complicated,” said Link, his footsteps on the metal floor like the echo of war drums.

“Hn,” said Ganondorf, tracing his fingers over the perfect golden wires.  _ I miss a thing that never really was. We could never have been friends for even one winter if either of us knew the whole truth at the beginning.  _ “Tell me. I’m good at riddles, remember?”

Link sighed, resting a hand on the sourwood frame. “You know how the monsters come to the swamp more often now? Yeah. Hyrule is like that too.”

Gan nodded, rocking the reed back against the heddles. “So he is getting stronger.”

“Maybe. I dunno. I need to - do some things. Find more of the puzzle. I don’t know how long it will take,” said Link, raking a clawed hand through his golden hair. “But I have to talk to you about something.”

Gan laid the shuttles in their hammock, glancing at him sidelong.  _ You look exhausted. _ “I‘m here.”

“You asked me something once. Years ago, in this time. I’d never thought about it before. I didn’t  _ want _ to think about it before,” said Link, gripping the loom frame so hard his knuckles shone. 

Gan covered Link’s hand with his own, rumbling soft and low. “And you don’t have to now. Go do what you have to do. I can take care of myself.”

Link shook his head and closed his eyes. “The reason Nabooru asked me if I was one of your warriors - tried to kill me if I said yes - is because  _ you swore fealty to the king of Hyrule _ . Everyone signed papers saying the war was over, but it wasn’t  _ really  _ over. You - did things for him. Evil things. You killed people for him - and you killed people so you could overthrow him.”

_ She alone refused to obey an evil King _ . “And Nabs sent you to spy on my mothers and recover the Moon’s Fist, so she could either help me - or stop me. Yes, I understood why she wanted that relic a long time ago. But. We aren’t  _ in _ that time anymore.”

“Yeah. And maybe the prophecy doesn’t mean what we all thought it meant,” said Link, raising those fathomless blue eyes. “I don’t want you to be alone. But I have to - I need to be  _ sure _ of something this time. Anything good I ever did in the befores is worthless if I don’t - if I do what they say is right and I - if something  _ bad _ happens.”

_ Bad things happened there. I don’t want to talk about it.  _

Gan turned astride on the weaving bench and pulled Link into his arms. His blood roared in his ears and his bones ached with the lightning coiled inside him. “If it happens, then it happens. It is what it is.”

Link uttered some muffled denial into his shirt, letting his weight rest against him.

Gan held him in the afternoon quiet, unable to spin out words for the tempest under his skin. He bowed, and kissed the top of Link’s fair head, just in case he never had another chance.

After a long time, or a short time, he never knew which, Link heaved a great sigh, and pushed away. He held the ocarina in his right hand, and he wouldn’t meet Gan’s eye. “I need to use the magic.”

Gan nodded, letting him go. 

Link set his jaw, drawing his plain sword from the baldric slung across his back. Between one breath and the next he ceased to be a boy, and became something  _ other _ wrapped in the seeming of a boy. 

Gan squared his shoulders.  _ Pity about the wasted cloth - the spiral pattern was finally coming out right too.  _

A flash of blue-white light, and he was gone. Gan stared at the empty air for a long time or a short time, he was never sure which, only that he felt sick. His throat burned and his eyes stung with tears he couldn’t allow. When his ass began to ache from sitting too long in one place, he rose from the bench and went to the window. Something about the sky wasn’t right, but he couldn’t figure out what.

He went out onto the deck, but that didn’t help. It almost seemed like the full moon had moved in front of the sun, but he saw both a crescent in the east, and an egg moon in the west. Sunlight gilded the deck, the railing, the cables - but the wandering stars glimmered in the heavens above.

“Death is even stranger than twilight,” he said to no one at all.

No one and nothing answered. 

He climbed to the upper aft deck, surprised to see the timeshift orb still glowing. Nine arrows in various states of somewhat broken lay scattered across the deck and against the pillar. All fletched with shining blue-green duck feathers in the fashion of his people.

Gan collected his bow and quiver, and stalked the length of the ship, scanning the marsh for signs of the intruders. He finally spotted a lone youth walking along the sandbar when he reached the prow. The fair stranger wore dark clothing, hard to make out in the weird half-light, but the ornamental wings on his spurs glowed as a shard of wandering fire.

_ Who wears spurs in a swamp? _ Gan nocked and sighted, raising his voice as the Exalted Sun would command the Saiev. “One more step and it will be your last.”

The stranger slid to a halt on the sand, without leaving footprints or furrows under him. He carried a short recurve bow and a two-handed sword, and he frowned up at the ship. “Don’t be stupid.”

_ Coincidence. Meaningless. A mirage. A dream.  _ “Prove yourself, fool.”

The youth cocked his head, and resumed his approach.

Gan loosed the arrow to thunk into the sand at his feet and nocked another. 

The youth slid to a halt again. “This isn’t funny Gan.”

Gan relaxed the string and lowered his bow. “Din’s merciful fires -  is that  _ you _ ?”

The youth snorted like a horse, and bowed his head as he dug in his slender satchel for something. It glimmered blue in his gloved hands. 

Gan dropped the bow when the faint, unfamiliar melody reached his ears, tormented by a sudden crushing headache and riptide of vertigo. The sky boiled, and dark clouds rushed from nowhere to dump a big fat rainstorm over their heads. 

And yet - he couldn’t help but laugh. 

The moment the vertigo began to ease, he wrapped his hand around the nearest cable and leapt over the railing. He stumbled and almost retched when he crossed the timeveil into true night, but he’d nothing in his stomach to lose. He stumbled in the mud and laughed. He swept his changed friend into his arms like a wayward ilmaha saved from a fall. “Mother of Sands what did you eat for breakfast? Bricks?”

Link made a rude noise, wriggling in his grasp. To no avail whatever - but stronger than Gan had ever known him. “Headstrong oaf - lemme down.”

Gan turned another circle and took a knee so he wouldn’t topple over. He opened his arms but couldn’t make himself release Link’s shoulder. He brushed Link’s sodden hair out of his eyes, trying to wrap his mind around the change a few minutes wrought. 

_ And all the things that remain the same.  _ He ghosted his thumb along the edge of the shadows gathered around familiar blue eyes. “What happened to you? Where did you get this scar?”

“I fell off my horse. It’s nothing,” said Link with a shrug, his voice both dear and strange in the same breath. “Did the magic make you sick? You’ve never crossed the timeveil when it was that wide before.”

“Only a little,” lied Gan. “You’ve changed a lot for half an hour. How long-?”

“Three years,” said Link, averting his eyes.

“So you - this is what you look like at fifteen? Sixteen?”  _ Three years in thirty minutes. But we’re in your time. You have a chance at the life the demon king stole from you.  _ Gan leaned back to really  _ look _ at him. Whipcord strong, dressed head to toe in shadows. “You  _ are _ growing up.”

Link shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

Gan fought the temptation to pull his haunted friend into his arms again, trying to content himself with cupping his shoulders. Link wore a chainmail shirt under the black tunic, and his black riding boots carried the telltale grooves of hidden splint-greaves. His recurve bow looked like good laminated horn, and the enormous two-hander on his back bore the Goron crest on the crossguard. “That’s a hell of a sword.”

Link shrugged, like it was unremarkable for a common-born Hylian wanderer to own a weapon forged in the fires of Death Mountain. “I broke the other one. Bad things are happening Gan. I need to take care of some things still. I just - I needed to tell you something first.”

Gan swallowed hard, wishing for a strong drink to blunt the pain.

Link sighed again, meeting his eye. He’d changed there too, a subtle oddness about his gaze that reminded him of Nabs somehow. “I’m sorry. For everything.”  

“Hn. It’s fine,” said Gan, smoothing back that unruly golden hair, vainly wiping the rain from his pale face - and forced himself to release the man. He rocked back to kneel in square, planting his fists firmly against his own thighs. He scraped together every crumb of discipline he owned, forging it into a leash for his tongue, his flesh, his wickedness.

“It’s  _ not _ fine,” returned Link. “I’ve been thinking about what you said - how you think it’s easy for me to be good. Maybe that used to be true, but it’s not anymore. Hasn’t been in a long time.”

“I won’t fight you,” rumbled Gan.

Link frowned in confusion, stepping forward with open hands exactly as he had in the shrine six - nine? - years ago. “What are you talking about-? No, Gan, don’t listen to the shadows. Please. Listen to  _ me _ . I went to Hyrule like you asked. All the things they told me you did in the first time - that you never denied doing - they’re all happening anyway. Even though you’re here. Even though you were in the magic for three years and  _ could not have done them _ .”

Gan nodded. “But  _ he _ could.”

“Maybe. I guess. I don’t know,” said Link, raking his clawed hands through his wet hair. He stood like that for a long stretch of stormy midnight, as if he might fly to pieces the moment he stopped holding himself down. Gan knew that feeling too.

“It will be different this time,” murmured Gan.

“It is already different than ever,” said Link, reaching to place his left hand on Gan’s shoulder. “But the moon  _ is _ going to fall in three days if I don’t stop it. I had to see you first. In case I make another mistake. Every time it happens, Majora learns and grows stronger. So. I need you to know something if I have to go upriver.”

Gan couldn’t help it. He pulled Link into his arms, tucking him under his chin even though he was at least three and maybe four hands taller than before, and almost four stone heavier. A blooded warrior. A hero of legend. 

At sixteen.

“Oof. You’re crushing me,” wheezed Link.

“Too bad,” whispered Gan.

“No - I need you to listen,” said Link, thumping his fist on Gan’s chest, and forced enough space between them to breathe. “I didn’t know any other way to be. I’ve never been smart. I was different from the people who raised me, and it was - I didn’t like it. And they didn’t either. Then the nightmares started. I saw you on a monstrous demon horse, riding through flame. When Deku said a  _ man in black armor _ cursed him and the forest and everything - I was  _ angry _ . I tried to save him, but he died. Do you understand? The eternal hearttree of the sacred woods  _ died _ .”

_ You did bad things. Evil things.  _ Gan stared over his golden head at the stormy marsh, holding his tongue, holding his breath, holding his only shard of Light, hoping Link wouldn’t notice the depth of his weakness.

“Mido said it was my fault Deku died. They said I had to leave. That I didn’t belong. I never belonged. I was Hylian, and I should go be with other Hylians. Only Navi came with me, and only because it was Deku’s last wish. I didn’t know how to  _ be _ Hylian. They called me  _ fairy boy _ in Hyrule, and Zelda said she dreamed I would come to her. She’s smart, like you. She knows things. She is good and kind and wise. Everyone knows that. So I believed her. I believed  _ everything _ . I wasn’t good at all. I just - did what people said would make them happy. They said it was right, and it’s easier to do what people say than to figure out what to do alone. So - maybe it’s worth more when it’s hard. Maybe that’s what the gods wanted all along. The old ones. You said once that the goddesses freed people from the spirits-”

“Yeah,” murmured Gan. “They gave mortals magic and treasures forbidden to gods and demons, and they gave us the liberty to choose which stars we follow. Which gods we worship, or to bow to none at all.”

Link nodded, dropping his forehead against Gan’s shoulder. “So I think - the demon isn’t destiny at all. I think it’s just - a bad thing that  _ could _ happen. Not an accident but - not what the goddesses want, either. It is the year of the moonfall from the time the forest closed, and it is a year I never saw in the first time because they locked  _ me _ in the place of the gods’ dreaming for seven years, so I would be strong enough to - so they could send me to - to stop the demon with the blessed sword. So maybe the key to the puzzle is somewhere in the now. In the years I’ve never seen.”

“And you’re not alone in this time,” whispered Gan, rubbing his back in slow circles, resisting the temptation to use his magic to weave shields into his skin. “We’ll figure it out this time. Together. Just us.”


	44. Chapter 44

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 3

The shrine reflected every footstep, every scrape of steel on stone, every shameful whimper of pain. Link dropped his sword beside the offering stone, wavering on his feet as he fumbled to strip out of belt and baldric and bloody satchel. Majora wasn’t the only one who learned. Apparently.

Link fell on his hands and knees in the blessed waters. Blood - his, and not his - flowered around him. Lightning crackled under his skin. He stammered a broken prayer to the Light, trying to ignore the little voice inside him whispering _this time, she won’t come_.

The light shifted more pink. Or maybe he had blood in his eyes again. He couldn’t play the ocarina like this. He was out of potions. He couldn’t heal himself and he couldn’t reach the ship and he couldn’t _make_ her help him.

“Please,” he begged any power that might be listening. “If I die here, he will be alone.”

Link imagined he heard bells.

_I’m not making it up! I saw a dozen of them, pink and blue and yellow and green and purple. I caught the best one - she was pink and she laughed like bells and her feet tickled. But she got away. When I fell._

“Welcome back, sweet boy. It’s been many cycles since you’ve come to see me,” said the Great Fairy. “My sisters all restore you a hundred times more often than I.”

“Please,” breathed Link, trying to ignore the stinging sharpness of the lightning curse battling the blessed waters.

“Your heart is so sweet I could just eat you right up,” laughed the fairy. “He doesn’t deserve your mercy you know.”

“It’s not mercy if it has to be earned,” whispered Link.

“Look how he spends his time when you aren’t there to mind his leash,” she said, stirring the waters with her shining hand.

Link fought to smother his rage as an image of the ship rippled under the water. The view shifted, as if seen through the eyes of a bird circling in the marsh. Which it probably was. Rajo said once that all reflections were connected to each other in some fashion.

And there he was, pacing the deck, watching a series of explosions march down the rail. One after the other, bright summer melons burst into colorful puffs of fog and wet splatters across the polished planks. Gan cursed, picking up the bomb mask from the mess, prodding at the maze of wires and tubes and gems between the painted outer face and the bleached doeskin lining.

Because _of course_ he needed to know how and why the damn thing worked, and attempt to improve on it.

The great fairy laughed, and at last he felt the healing magic fizz up through his body, knitting him back together. He felt rather like a poppet dragged through stony rapids.

“He’s just exploring. Testing. It’s not evil to want to know things,” said Link, watching the image of Gan strapping the mask to another doomed melon.

“It _can_ be. Especially when there’s a greedy, violent demon wanting to know it,” she returned primly, playing with his hair while her magic poured into his body.

“He’s still human,” said Link, as Gan pinned two tiny bombflower charges to a wad of rags and bullhide he fastened to another melon.

“Half. At best. And that much only when my sweet boy sacrifices his dear little life to keep him in line.”

Far away, Gan exploded the melons. He didn’t look happy about it though. “Humans need other people around, else their minds will shiver to pieces.”

“Like yours? Oh don’t scowl at me sweet boy, I only tease you. I’ve missed your company so. Here, give us a kiss,” she urged, lifting him up from the blessed waters.

“Please,” begged Link, shaking his head in denial and trying to wriggle free of her grasp.

She brought her shining face right up against his own, so close he could see the wandering stars dance in the void of her vast eyes. “You want to be healed don’t you?”

“I can’t stay that long,” he pleaded. “The moon is falling. I have to stop it.”

“Tsk. Sad,” she pouted, snuggling him against her bright face. “Wherever did you pick up this stubborn light magic seal? It’s quite an effective little spell, slippery as a-”

“Lightning,” he corrected her, trying not to think about how intense it’d become.

“That’s what I said. Light magic. Oh sweet boy, didn’t you know? The light arrows you remember are just a more polished, refined version of the wild energy you’ve found in keese and chu and lizal and wiz-”

“No - it’s not the same at all,” said Link, grateful that she set him back down into the spring. Now that most of his cuts were closing up, the water didn’t sting so much on its own. Everything itched immensely though. “His power comes from darkness. This was an accident. He’s not had magic lessons since he was a boy. He didn’t mean to.”

“Oh no, there is an absolutely _ferocious_ intent in this beastly little enchantment,” she complained, sitting on a mote of pink light in midair and crossing her long legs. “I can’t unravel it with the power available to me now. Speak with my sisters, perhaps one of them-”

Link shook his head. “I’ve tried. You _all_ say it is too much.”

“Not surprised,” she scoffed, folding her arms. “The sparks seem to think I mean you some kind of harm.”

“Magic can’t think,” said Link, baffled. _Magic has rules. It doesn’t have a mind of its own any more than - oh, a rock. It can’t act without someone or something pushing it._

The great fairy made a rude noise. “Magic can do whatever the wielder imagines it can do. What a sad creature it was who cursed you, to imagine you have anything to fear from me and my sisters, sweet boy.”

“Fear,” whispered Link, his heart turning somersaults in his chest. “It is always worse when I am afraid.”

The great fairy laughed, bopping a shining fingertip against his brow. “Nonsense. You are courageous. And soon you will be whole again and when you have finished your little quest, you will return with those kisses, won’t you my sweet boy?”

Link shook his head, backing away. “That’s not what courage means. At least not with mortals. I am afraid _all the time_.”

“Your modesty and humility is so impossibly charming my sweet little hero,” she purred.

Link froze at the edge of the water, shuddering as the lightning flared inside him. “Don’t call me that.”

She laughed. “Why, I thought you _liked_ the little name that ignorant farmer made for you.”

“I have to go,” he stammered, stepping out of the spring though he was half-healed at best. He snatched up his things, hurrying away from her shrill laughter. He could heal more later. In town maybe, or he could stop at the farm for the snake jewels. The summerstones might not be fast enough alone, but they would help a little. And their weight felt nice. And the tiny golden bells reminded him of the days when life was simple. Even though he still didn’t deserve to wear green again.

Link stumbled when the magic dropped him on the shrine island. It was always harder to control when the lightning flared. He adjusted the weight of the sword on his back, and set the sealed golden casket on the ground at his feet. He wasn’t sure what the magic would do to it if he changed form with it in his satchel.

He glanced toward the shipwreck, cradling the painted wooden mask in his hands. The explosions had stopped, but that didn’t mean anything. He didn’t see anything moving but some marsh birds.

He bowed, a corner of his mind panicked for the thousandth time because this one had no eye slits. No vent for his nose, his mouth. It would even cover his ears.

All of the worst masks were like that.

It hurt.

This magic always hurt.

The power of the mask sunk thorns into his skin, wound chokevine around his bones, pulling and tearing and remaking his body to its terrible design.

_No witchcraft hereafter charm thee-!_

Lightning crashed through him, stealing sight and sound as the pain overwhelmed him. Nothing existed but darkness and pain and fear and horror and the absolute necessity of mastering it. He _needed_ the power of this face. He needed the numbness and focused purpose. He needed the magic, the likeness of a dead god, a divine weapon, if he ever hoped to persuade Gan to be good. Magic was the only thing he respected. Power was the only thing he wanted.

 _Come with me. It's time to be a hero._  
  
Another bolt of lightning moved through his flesh, chasing and chased by the invigorating buzz of immense strength. The weight of his sword changed, become nothing at all and everything terrible all at once. He imagined he could hear it sing inside his foggy head, and the rainbow brilliance of its deadly magic reflected off every branch and stone and puddle - and one slender boat skimming up onto the shore, black as midnight and elegant as a thorn.

“ **You have sacrificed much in pursuit of the Light,** ” said Link.

“And the Light demands still more. Oh I know,” said Gan, striding up the hill easily this time. He wore a long pale shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the placket half open, over trousers in the traditional Gerudo style today. Both had eight rows of blue stripes at every hem, and he’d tied over all of it a garish yellow sash exactly the color of his curl-toed boots. “Nine years is a long time to wait for your promise.”

“ **You are fixed on your course? There is great danger in meddling with the curse upon these bones** ,” said Link, gesturing at the golden casket.

Gan shrugged, hooking his thumbs in his sash. “Everything is dangerous according to you. These carry the same corruption as the remains of Vaijun?”

Link nodded. “ **They will poison any water they rest in for more than one day, and they will slowly drain the life and magic of any mortal who lays hands on them directly. The touch of Light will cleanse the miasma so long as it shines, but it will not reverse the damage it wreaks.** ”

“I have a siphon prototype nearly finished, but even if that fails, the ward chains have been proven in combat,” said Gan, his golden eyes bright with challenge. Link wondered if he even knew what fear was like, he who never doubted his decisions, even when the horrible consequence stood right in front of his face. “The greater difficulty is keeping him from poking his stubborn little nose in while I work. The seals on this chest - they can be blood-bound to me alone?”

Link shook his head. “ **Once opened, they will cease to exist in this time. Do you wish to remain in solitude here, to study and work without distraction?** ”

“He’s not a distraction,” said Gan with a nonchalant air. “He’s a _fool_ , overproud of his strength and courage, but his heart is good and kind and true. He’s off saving the world again, which is a good thing for _you_ , as he doesn’t think much of gods and spirits that meddle in things that don’t concern them.”

“ **The fates of the gods’ chosen are** **_every_ ** **concern of mine.** ”

“Then you better make sure he wins,” said Gan, lifting that proud chin. It was a very good thing he’d finally stopped growing, for even another couple hands and he’d stand the equal of a minor god. His arrogance needed no such help. “Else I swear by shadow the Light will be sorry it was ever spun.”


	45. Chapter 45

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 4

The last red-hot bloodsteel pin slipped into place easy as anything. The last  _ tap-wham-tap-tap _ against the forgestone rang pure and clear. 

“Now.  _ Work _ damn you,” murmured Ganondorf, wiping burrs from the jeweler’s hammer. He returned it to its slender pocket in the roll of buttery black doeskin, cleaning each of his tools with a scrap of heavy black silk while he waited for the metal to cool. 

An hour rolled past as he checked each and every ring against a tuft of the finest unspun cotton for smoothness, filing away every flaw. At last, after a year of work, he laid the chain in the forge until the carved bone trapped in the weave turned black. He fished it out with a slender hook wrapped in a protective layer of burned silk and copal, dropping it at once in the golden bowl of blessed water from the fairy shrine. 

Only then did he dare strip off his black silk gloves and bank the forge.

Ganondorf shrouded all the lightcrystal lamps and locked his workroom behind him, and tried not to think about it all afternoon. He ate lightly as possible, lying as best he could manage every time Link tried to persuade him to eat.

At twilight, as soon as Link turned away to shoo the cucco into their coop for the night, he ripped through the shadowroads to his dark workroom. He lit a fat beeswax candle with a spark, perversely pleased at how  _ easily _ the magic answered him. 

Wrapping his hand in the doubled chain felt like he’d thrust his arm in a barrel of ice for an hour. Not that it was  _ cold _ \- rather, his whole arm went numb. He couldn’t call a spark with that hand - but after a few tries he managed with the other.

Draping the chain around his neck drove the air from his lungs in a great whoosh. He staggered against the workbench, dizzy as with far too much drink. It didn’t hurt though - nothing  _ hurt _ . After a minute he even got his breath back. He couldn’t see, but that didn’t signify. He’d covered the lightcrystals apurpose after all.

“The candle is still burning though,” he told his workroom, frowning at the fragile little flame. A moment ago it had seemed a hundred times brighter. None of the other spellchains had that effect, not even the first miasma test.

“Is this what other people see in the dark?  _ Nothing _ ? Have the subtle nuances been demon magic all along?”

He gestured to open the shadows. 

Nothing happened. 

He didn’t feel it fighting him. He didn’t feel it fizzle. He just  _ reached _ and - found only emptiness.

He forced himself to focus through the vertigo, calling the wandering fire with Will, with gesture, with Word, with song.

Nothing happened.

Ganondorf stood in the darkness, and  _ laughed _ . 

He knocked something - several somethings, probably - off his workbench when he finally sobered enough to fumble towards the door. 

“Good thing it’s easier from this side,” he told the lock.

The lock said nothing.

Gan imagined he heard Link yelling. He drew as deep a breath as he could manage - it felt strange, but he couldn’t say he felt  _ hindered _ in any way - and bellowed in return. Or first. Or whatever. The absurdity of it sent him into another laughing fit, and he had to lean against the wall to keep his feet under him. 

“Gan-! There you are. What the hell? What prank are you at this time?” Link called from the deck above.

Gan laughed, pulling himself up one more step. He might as well have climbed a watchtower.

Link frowned, hurrying down the stairs, light on his feet as ever.

Gan stood in the twilight, remembering in his bones what it used to feel like - and reached for the shadows where they should have been. Where they always were before. Going through the motions of spinning them out to his own design, pretending he could feel anything at all. 

Nothing happened.

Gan laughed, pulling himself up another couple steps as Link caught at his other hand. He thanked the distant gods he’d locked up the rest of the bones hours ago, and laughed.

“Are you getting sick? Come on Gan, this isn’t funny. You’ve barely eaten for two days running, and now you’re shaking? Bend a little - let me see if you have a fever.”

Gan shook his head with a helpless giggle, ruffling his free hand through Link’s golden hair. “Never been better.”

Link frowned at him. “Are you wearing some kind of new spell chain?”

“Something like that,” said Gan, scrubbing his hand over his eyes. The shadows remained murky and indistinct. 

“I’m not sure this is a good design,” said Link, stroking his arm. “You don’t look well. And you’re wobbling.”

Gan shrugged. “Probably hungry. Figured it was better not to waste my lunch if it messed with my stomach. Didn’t expect this, but it’s fine. Maybe I’ll get used to it.”

“Gan. You’re slurring. You don’t smell like drink though - here, let’s get you off the stairs. Why is your workroom pitch black?”

“It’s fine. I’ll be fine.” Gan giggled helplessly, stumbling, holding the stair rail for all he was worth. Which admittedly wasn’t much.

“It is  _ not _ fine. Gan -  _ oof _ \- I can’t deadlift you if you fall. Stop being so damn stubborn. Lean on me. Let’s get you down,” Link urged, wrapping Gan’s arm around his shoulders.

“You’ve packed on more muscle,” said Gan with a whistle. “Bet you can lift half as much as me now. And you’re taller. When did you get taller? Did you go dance on the river while I was working?”

“I’m not taller, you’re slouching. You never slouch. Come on, at least sit down so I can get you out of this contraption.”

“I didn’t make the damn thing to  _ not _ use it,” scoffed Gan, trying to turn about. The whole world rocked and wobbled instead. “Without magic, I’m useless to  _ him _ .”

“Oh  _ Gan _ ,” sighed Link, placing a hand on his chest. “What have you done?”

“Tsk - don’t touch it without gloves. I’ll need your help to make the rest later, and take in the slack, because  _ clearly _ I’m going to be clumsy as fuck for a bit. I think I can show you how it’s done. Later, after a nap. But  _ he _ won’t be able to see me now. So it’s fine. No hurry.”

“Then let’s take it off for a minute - don’t be so stubborn, ok? You did a good job. It’s got strong magic. We can test it again tomorrow, when you’re not tired. And starving.”

“Don’t be such a worrywort,” chided Gan, pulling him close. That, he could feel. Link against his side, warm and strong and steady.

“We’ve been standing on the fourth stair for twenty minutes. Take it off Gan. Please.”

“Pfft. I know what I’m doing. I’m the most powerful sorcerer in the world remember?”

Letting go of the railing to gesture grandly proved to be a bad idea. Link managed to slow their tumble a little, and Gan managed to shove Link more or less uphill in the process, but they still ended up in a heap on the threshold of the workroom.

Link groaned, and sighed, and laughed. He sagged his weight across Gan’s chest, thunking his shoulder. “You are the most pigheaded fool I’ve ever met.”

Gan laughed, wrapping his arms around his dearest friend. “It’s good to hear you laugh. Even better to be flat though. Mother of Sands, I was  _ not _ expecting the vertigo.”


	46. Chapter 46

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 5

Morning light streamed through the hatch, painting the entire midship hold in a wash of tidy squares and lines. Link hauled on the shade cord to draw the gauzy summer awning across the grate to soften it. He draped the low table with a fresh cloth - houndstooth in pale and deepest gold, with embroidered pumpkin-orange napkins today. Sunflowers from the desert border in a topaz-colored faceted glass vase from Clocktown. Shiny black dishes and gilded utensils. Fat bottles of crushed salt and sugar rocks and spices and pepperfruit and King’s Honey. A lacquered box of brambleflower and goldenleaf tea. Wide ribbons of rust and sky twisted together and strung around the room.

“Birthdays are supposed to be special,” muttered Link, brushing a few forgotten crumbs from the beetroot-pink padded bench.  _ He’s not a child anymore though. Maybe this is the year he will say it is silly. _

The thought brought the man, dressed already in a plain white shirt and trousers. His hair was still down, dripping from the shower and soaking his linen shirt. He leaned against the doorframe, clearing his throat and glaring suspiciously at the festive room, but said nothing. Yet. 

“Tsk. You don’t have to get up just because I did,” said Link. 

Gan shrugged. “Didn’t mean to intrude on you earlier. Thought you were up tending the cucco, wasn’t paying attention to - I didn’t hear the water I guess.”

“Pfft. Don’t worry about it,” said Link, waving off his frown. Gan could be so moody sometimes. “No reason for you to have known I was awake hours and hours ago. I had some things to fetch from Outside, early this morning, and I didn’t want to track dust everywhere. You want to lay back down or should I start the eggs?”

“Still. Hyrule’s funny about that stuff,” rumbled Gan, stepping into the room.

“We aren’t  _ in _ Hyrule,” teased Link.  _ Of all things to worry about.  _ “Make up your mind - ready to eat or no?”

Gan shrugged. “Depends on if there’s heartradish involved. Tea sounds good though - is that  _ spicebark _ on the table?”

“Don’t be stubborn. You  _ know _ you need it to keep your strength up,” said Link, wagging his finger in reproach. 

Gan snorted, tipping the bottles one by one to see what treats they held. “Missing one day won’t kill me. I’ll eat double tomorrow if that will make you happy.”

Link groaned, crossing the room to prod his chest - and get a better look at him. The curse chains drained him badly, but Gan refused to make any serious attempt at redesigning them. Rather, he kept making  _ more _ , wristlets and anklets and locked arm cuffs and a weird belt he wore under his clothes. He wouldn’t let go of the idea that his magic was eroding their strength when in truth the miasma was slowly scouring  _ him _ down to a shadow of himself.

“Of course if you keep annoying me I might just gobble you up instead.” Gan caught his wrist after a couple failed attempts, carrying Link’s hand to his mouth to gnaw on the side in jest. 

Link laughed and made a rude noise. “As if. Which tea would you like?”

“Start with spiced black I guess. Clear the cobwebs.” Gan shrugged, bowing to kiss the top of his head and muss his hair. He liked to poke fun at how small Link still was, even in a body that was probably seventeen. Sometimes he would even rest his elbows on Link’s head like he’d become furniture. “You gonna cut your hair this season or can I persuade you to try a queue?”

“Long hair is  _ work _ ,” said Link, setting the kettle back on the hob. The hold really was a much nicer place to eat in the summer. The kitchen stayed horribly stuffy most of the day, but the tiny one-plate stove didn’t throw enough heat to matter here. 

“Hn. Shall I cut mine to save you the trouble then? Find out what mischief you invent when I take half your chores away?”

“It’s different when it’s  _ your _ hair. Anyways you’re a prince. You’re supposed to be fancy. It suits you,” said Link with a shrug, pretending the very thought didn’t make his heart ache. The most mundane things were so damn complicated and ugly. Gan would never understand, and shouldn’t have to.

Gan didn't make a sharp retort this time. He just folded himself onto the bench in descending lotus, brooding over his tea. 

Link let him be, getting breakfast ready to cook as soon as Gan decided he was hungry. 

“It feels weird to say I’m twenty-five,” said Gan at last. “Shouldn’t it be twenty-two, since that’s how many birthdays I’ve actually seen?”

“Counting that way gets  _ really _ confusing. You have to have an anchor - you wouldn’t measure something by moving both ends of the string. You’d never make sense of anything,” said Link, pouring a third cup for each of them. “It is five years from the year it began. Simple. Anyways it’s not like you remember being a baby either.”

“Fair,” said Gan, but the way he shook his head said it didn’t make sense at all. “Do you count how many times you’ve looped around the anchor?”

Link shook his head. “Didn’t think about counting until I’d already danced the river so often I lost my face, so didn’t see the point.”

“Breakfast,” said Gan, his golden eyes fixed on his cup. He didn’t say another word while Link cooked, but that wasn’t _really_ surprising since he emptied the rest of the teapot by the time Link set the omelette in front of him. 

Gan frowned at the plate, nudging the food with his fingers.

Link slapped his wrist and tried to hand him a fork. Which he took - and set on his other side, peeling the fluffy egg layer back with his bare fingers to pick through the vegetables and cheese.

“Truffles,” murmured Gan.

“Well you  _ said _ no heartradish,” teased Link, reaching with the other fork to steal a loop of golden onion.

Gan grunted, hooking his arm around his shoulders and crushing him against his side while he ate a pinch of steaming vegetables. When Link objected, Gan licked his fingers clean and ruffled his hair before he would relax his grip. “You’re getting better at this cooking thing. Almost edible today.”

Link made a rude noise and thumped his chest. “Why do you have to be so dour all the time?”

Gan ate another handful of omelette, studying him sidelong. Impossible to know what he was thinking when he retreated behind the mask of the tactician, the monarch, the untouchable.

So Link pretended to ignore him. Until Gan held out a slice of the perfectly tender savory mushroom. Link ate it without thinking, even though he was in the middle of spearing another bite on his fork. He realized what he’d done only when the rich morsel lay on his tongue, oozing butter.

“Hn,” said Gan with a sardonic grin, his golden eyes narrowing. 

Link’s felt a rush of heat in his face, in his ears. His embarrassment only deepened when Gan fished out another slice for him. Link pushed his hand away. “Barbarian.”

Gan lowered his hand, watching Link eat the bite he’d fetched for himself. Inscrutable. Impossible.

_ Don’t be so touchy. _ Link speared a mushroom and held the fork just above Gan’s reach. “ _ This _ is how it’s done in  _ civilized _ countries.”

Gan’s eyes creased at the corners, and he lunged for the fork with a theatrical growl.

Link laughed, spearing another mushroom as Gan licked his lips. This time he managed to knock the fork from his hand, flinging bits of egg and vegetable at both of them. But - he laughed. Like the mess didn’t matter this time. Like it didn’t bother him to be clumsy today, like eating eggs with their fingers was the best game they’d ever invented.

“Let’s go swimming today,” said Link around a mouthful of vegetables.

Gan chewed a truffle thoughtfully. “Water sounds nice. But you  _ know _ that’s not a good idea anymore.”

“We can stay in the little walled pool we made behind the ship. It’ll be fine.”

“Hn,” said Gan, scraping together another bite.

“Or! You could take the chains off. It’s just one day. Then we could take the boat out to that  _ big _ pond to the west-”

“They don’t work like that,” rumbled Gan, avoiding his eye.

“ _ Fine _ ,” sighed Link. 

Gan clicked his tongue and held up a slice of fried goldenroot. 

Link chomped at it like a nibbling swamp needlefish, pleased to hear Gan laugh at him when he did it.

“How about - hot tub? I can set up the canopy,” said Link. “And fruit. And wine? I got some of the fizzy kind. Or they said it was fizzy. The glass is too dark to tell.”

“It’s already hot,” grunted Gan.

“Cold tub?”

Gan lifted a brow. “That is - not a thing.”

“But it  _ could _ be. Throw a bunch of freezestone in the bottom?

“Wildman,” scoffed Gan. 

Link waited for him to lift another bite - and lunged over to steal it from his fingers.

Gan exclaimed in shock.

Link tumbled off the bench and raced for the door before he could even finish swearing.


	47. Chapter 47

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for self-harm

Steam coiled heaviest in the corner behind the sluicegate, where the wall of water trapped it. The air grew thick and damp, especially when the water was hot. And at midsummer, the cistern nearly boiled.

Which was perfect.

Ganondorf liked the heat.

Especially when it hurt.

Link’s pale skin would have turned angry pink after only a minute - his soft, delicate flesh might have burned and split and bled for such abuse. The very idea of crimson blooming against white disgusted him, and yet tasting sweet copper on his tongue made everything sharper.

Better. Warmer.

Ganondorf leaned forward, jamming elbow and wrist even harder against the metal walls, biting down on his left forearm as hard as he could. He set his teeth again and again but  scarred, callused skin didn’t break easily. He should have been more careful about that from the beginning, but he’d never meant to do it in the first place. It was an accident.

Link would touch his cheek when the chains made him do something clumsy. He would speak softly. He would say it was only an accident. He would say it was ok. Everything would be ok this time.

Ganondorf groaned, releasing his arm and rocking back on his heels. His jaw hurt from clamping down so hard for too long. His knees hurt, and his shins, and his ankles, all from kneeling on the unforgiving grooves in the metal floor. His flesh would carry the pattern of the floor for hours, but that was fine. If the marks lingered for days it would be even better. Bruises helped him remember.

Scars helped him forget.

Link remembered everything, in fragments and pieces and unfathomable silences. His blue eyes deep as forever held secrets upon secrets, keyed to a magic as old as the gods. And yet he walked in the Light. Good and bright and true. He was the Light. Brave and kind and steady.

“ _My_ light,” murmured Ganondorf, opening his eyes as he fumbled for the razor.

He didn’t need to be quiet. Link wasn’t here to overlisten. To worry. To touch his arm and ask about a fresh bandage. To frown when he lied and laughed off another accident. To unwind the cloth and wash a wound he’d already cleaned, just to be sure. To paint his wicked skin with red potion, his elegant white hands gentle and confident and soothing and strong.

The sting was starting to ebb.

Everything was starting to ebb back into the aching heaviness that lived inside his chest. Link had been away in Hyrule nine months now. Checking things. Making sure. Again. He would be gone at least a year, he’d said. Until the trees lost their gold. Gan could say whatever he wanted. As loud as he wanted. He could scream at the pain if he felt like it and no one would ever know but the cucco abovedecks. And they wouldn’t care.

Ganondorf bit his lip, and laid bright steel against his inner thigh where no one would ever see it. Exactly one blade’s width from the last one. Like always.

Sharp. Bright.

Ganondorf moaned in pleasure and pain. Now there were six fresh little arcs on his dark skin, flowering crimson, seeping and blooming in the water puddled beneath him.

He panted, leaning his weight into the wall again, and tried to voice the tempest. What actually poured from his tongue was barely a hoarse whisper. He knew no one could hear his shame, his wickedness, and his heart raced wildly at the thought - the temptation - the possibility - of such dissolute wallowing.

What would it be like, if he could? If he _did_?

“Link,” he whispered, his heart clenching tight with fear. He rocked back, letting the hot water pour over his hair again, closing his eyes against the splash of it. Ironic that he avoided these small annoyances reflexively, even as he considered another pair of cuts. Maybe his arms this time. On the inside of the bicep. Where sweat would drip and sting, and remind him to be good.

_Be good. Be good._

Ganondorf groaned, curling forward again.

“I can’t. I can’t. It’s too much,” he muttered.

Water poured over his bare back.

The sting ebbed.

Link, laughing in a golden autumn afternoon, throwing an apple core to horses on the other side of a fence.

Climbing over a pile of shipping crates, every muscle in his shoulders taut and rippling.

Asleep in his arms, peaceful, innocent.

Ganondorf cut deeper, until the inside of his ears twanged like a broken komuz. He dropped the razor again, oddly satisfied by the plonking pink splash.

He started to moan, but the sound of his own voice grated against his raw nerves. He set his teeth on his arm again. Familiar. Forbidden. Exactly what he needed.

Link, fussing about long showers and cold water from the bottom of the cistern.

Humming under his breath while he pulled the wooden comb through his hair.

Sticking his tongue out when he concentrated.

“Oh my light,” he gasped, his vision blurring as delicious tremors shuddered through his wicked flesh.


	48. Chapter 48

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 6

The world rolled away in a blur of gold and orange and red. Hyrule aflame, gilded and bloody in the waning of the sixth year after it would have begun. Forest and field gave way to sand and rock, and the winding dusty ribbon of the forgotten Termina trade road unfurling far below.

Link stumbled when the magic dropped him in the upper east pasture beside the violently colorful little wooden shrine. He knelt upon yellowed grass, catching his breath, bleeding from a hundred steel arrows in his skin and a dozen wounds that should have each crippled a mortal man. The power of the mask pushed the pain and despair somewhere to the edges of his mind, filling him with emptiness and rage instead. But he dared not remove it to reclaim his own face until he could repair  _ this _ body. 

If it could be said any face truly belonged to him anymore.

A plume of dust drifted between the distant house and barn. Link didn’t want Ensren to see him like this. But he didn’t want to go to the great fairies yet, not with the curses of the Hylian Knights still ringing inside his head, not bearing the fresh memory of wild lightning arcing from his flesh to destroy holy arrows, not if he still had any red potions left here.

Link leaned on the rainbow sword, forcing himself to rise, to duck under the merry little flags stitched with the emblems of the golden goddesses, to face down the eerie whitewashed effigy with its red war paint and blue rune and wilted coneflower and chamomile garlands.

“ **What did** **_you_ ** **do when your world was burning? Did** **_you_ ** **ever find the right path?** ”

Neither the primitive statue nor the divine spirit in the mask answered.

But.

A faint chime of ethereal bells drew his attention down. A fat, open-mouthed earth-colored pot sat beside the statue this time. Someone had painted a winged sun disk in beetroot juice on the side, and tied a bright pink ribbon under its rim.

“ **Now you can catch a fairy of your own. She was pink and laughed like bells, and her feet tickled,** ” he recited to the chilly autumn morning, to the shrine, to the pot, to the distant and baffling gods. 

When he saw the little fairy raise her tiny glowing head above the rim of the clay pot, his soul burned with sudden grief as raw as if those disasters had crashed his heart to pieces only yesterday. 

Despite the mask.

She laughed, and her magic tickled when she danced up his bloody arm. Her magic wasn’t enough to fix everything, but she gave him the strength to pull the broken steel-tip and spent freezestone arrows and wait for Ensren to arrive on his gentle bay horse. 

He did not say anything about the blood, but only offered a fresh jug of applejack for him and a huge sack full of heartradish and truffles for Gan.

“ **Ensren my brother,** ” said Link, returning the sword to his back. “ **It is as you say. She is not a kind sovereign in this time.** ”

Ensren nodded, folding his hands behind his back. “And the wildwood?”

“ **Strange. Angry. Growing, where it is not aflame on the orders of the crown. To purify the corruption, they say. But for every tree the royal knights burn, a dozen souls join the stal under the Green and many deku baba sprout.** ” Link drank sparingly from the jug - applejack didn’t have as much power over this body, and he didn’t want to waste it. 

“What’s the  _ real _ reason they send trained knights to burn a sacred forest? Do they think the guardian stone is a weapon?”

_ Anything can be a weapon. _  “ **I didn’t tell her where it is. I wouldn’t, even if I could. The paths in the Green move with the wind.** ”

“Expensive obsession, divine weapons. We hear the war is going full tilt again.”

Link nodded, miserable. “ **She writes very bad laws in this time.”**

“Or her father does, and she’s foolish or cruel enough to sign them,” said Ensren, calm as if they spoke of the mischief of cats.

“ **One more year,** ” said Link, fitting the cork back into the jug. “ **Ruto has not found the sapphires inside the engagement gift, nor Darunia the ruby inside the painted drum.** **But Saria is sad and the forest is strange, and I cannot restore the emerald to her.** **One more year to the last battle in the time of the land dying, when he would bring the tower down and rise in demon form-** ”

“Once, long ago. Not in this time,” cut in Ensren. “How fare the Sheikah and the Gerudo and the common folk of the provinces?”

“ **It is a hard time, as much as in the first, only it is slower,** ” said Link, taking a knee so Ensren wouldn’t have to keep craning his neck to look at him. “ **They are all proud and greedy and violent and blaming everyone for the bad things. I broke some of the prisons, but they begin to hide them with strong shadow magic. I tried to scare the knights away from the Green, but they come back. I tried to go to the temples, but the priests have named me demon, and locked the sacred places against me, and the sages are not awake yet to make them understand.** **_Me!_ ** **I am the hero!** ”

“People do strange things when they’re afraid,” said Ensren. 

“ **How do I fix it?** ”

“You don’t,” he said with a shrug. “People are going to feel and think and do as they please. You’ve spent ages hunting the fox for getting your prize cucco, and sounds to me your own hound is the one in the coop.”

“ **No-! Zelda is good and wise and-** ”

“Good leaders don’t send their army to punish starving refugees and burn holy ground in search of power,” said Ensren, implacable.

“ **_Power_ ** ,” said Link, emptiness roaring through his bones.  _ If you won’t fix it, I will go get a power that will. I found the secret that makes Hyrule so powerful. It will be capable of manifesting literally anything. _ _  
_

_ Those toys are too much for you - give them to me. _

_ Without a strong and righteous mind, he couldn’t control the power of the gods. All the tragedy that has befallen Hyrule was my doing - I was so young. I couldn’t comprehend the consequences of trying to control the Sacred Realm. _


	49. Chapter 49

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 7

Perfect, gentle, sticky snow drifted down from the heavens, layering more white serenity on Clocktown. The snow muted the noise of solstice revelry filling every street and square in town, and elevated the huddled little houses from shabby to quaint.

Ganondorf  _ tried _ to pay attention to the slippery cobblestones under his feet, but Link was so distractingly and infectiously cheerful about everything today. He’d insisted on going to town for the holiday even though they didn’t really need supplies, and rupee poured from his fingers for every sweet and frivolous amusement on the way. 

Gan humored him, or tried. Link didn’t seem to notice his difficulty, which was all to the good. Hard enough to shake his concern when he managed to trip over his own feet for the unpteenth time. The curse chains worked, and Link was happy in the twenty-first winter since he left his homeland, and that was all that could be allowed to matter. 

Eventually, stuffed on cake and hot cider and a hundred kinds of sugared fruit confections, Gan persuaded Link to retreat from the crowded main plaza for some spiced and spirit-laced drinking chocolate at the milk bar. 

No one gave them trouble this year. 

_ He does look about nineteen now, I guess. Except when he’s acting the fool, or else if he’s got that sword in hand. If I ever meet the scorpions that decided it was good and right to stuff a feral child in the body of a blooded warrior and point him towards a battlefield, I swear by the Light I’ll rip their guts open with my bare hands and leave them for the crows.  _

“She’s pretty,” said Link after the serving girl fled back to the kitchen. 

Gan shrugged. “I don’t know how you can tell when she’s red as a voltfruit.”

“So she’s shy around a handsome stranger. So are most people,” said Link, tipping his tall chair back to watch the dancing at the other end of the room. “Anyways the kitchen’s probably hot.”

“Yeah,” mumbled Gan, picking at a splinter in the table.

“There’s  _ lots _ of pretty girls at this festival,” said Link after a minute. “I bet that tall, soft one by herself with all the roses in her hair would like to dance.”

“So go dance,” said Gan with a shrug, scanning the crowd for any particular beauty he might mean and finding none. Half the women in town wore roses of some kind this year. It was the  _ fashion _ .

Link made a rude noise. “As if. I only ever learned one dance and it wasn’t this kind. You should go ask her.”

“I’m sure she’d rather you asked her yourself.”

“Alright then, if you’re afraid of a village miss,  _ I’ll _ go ask her for you,” said Link, rolling his eyes and letting his chair fall back down with a resounding thump. “Which name should I give her for you?”

“Wait what-? No - sit down - what are you, crazy? I don’t want to dance with some  _ stranger _ ,” hissed Gan, scrambling to catch his arm before he could slip away.

Link laughed at him, prodding his stomach rather too roughly for comfort after a day of eating nothing but sweets. “Worried she’ll think you’re dessert and eat you up? You’ll be  _ fine _ . She looks nice. And she won’t be a stranger once you talk to her.”

“I don’t  _ care _ to talk to her - if you like her so much,  _ you _ go dance with her. I’m not leaving this table,” growled Gan, keeping his voice low so they wouldn’t attract too much attention. Hopefully.

“Oh  _ fine _ , if you wonna be  _ boring _ ,” said Link, rolling his eyes. “It’s a festival. You’re supposed to be like,  _ festive _ . Do fun stuff. Like a birthday but  _ bigger _ .”

“Sit down, the girl’s back with the chocolate.”

Link groaned, but cooperated. For now. 

He then proceeded to pester Gan for an opinion of every woman in the bar, and a dozen shopkeeps he’d barely even noticed at the time.

“Look, you want to go find a pretty girl to smile at you and step on your toes, go. Me not dancing shouldn’t mean anything for you,” said Gan, scooping up the last of the cream from his cup and considering whether or not he might burst if he ordered another. 

Link made a rude noise. “Nah. I just want - look, seven years.  _ We made it _ . We won. We should celebrate.”

Gan gestured to encompass the drinks, the bar, the whole ridiculous festival.

Link only laughed at him, waving the girl over for another round. 

When the dregs of the second cup stared back at him, he couldn’t hold back his curiosity any longer. “Did you ever have a - girl you danced with in the befores? Someone you miss?”

“I guess. Not the dancing really, but I was engaged a few times,” Link shrugged.

Gan tried and failed to make his tongue work.  _ Engaged? _

Link laughed, draining a third cup of boozy chocolate. “Kindof a funny story. Talon bet I couldn’t catch cucco, and he was  _ so _ mad I kept winning even when he made the game harder, he even wagered Malon. She thought it was pretty funny. We were friends, sorta. She helped me free Epona. I miss her, but it wouldn’t be fair to make her live in a swamp.”

“People can get used to a lot of things,” said Gan to his empty cup.

“Horses can’t though. She’s happier at the ranch than she’d ever be on our ship.”

“Oh,” said Gan, his face burning in shame for the misunderstanding. “Well do you - think about going back? Marrying?”

Link shook his head. “I try not to go to the Zora domain either. Princess Ruto’s  _ crazy _ . She bit me once when I told her I needed to leave, so I had to sneak out.”

Gan raised a brow. “So you’ve got lots of girlfriends then.”

Link made a rude noise. “Nah. I had friends who were girls, that’s all.”

“Did you ever - ok, you said you don’t know how to dance, but did you ever do - other things with them?”

“Sure. We had all  _ kinds _ of adventures in the befores. Exploring stuff, racing, climbing, hunting monsters - ok that one was with Ruto. Malon and Saria don’t fight.”

“No, I mean - did you ever do sweetheart things with those girls? Like - kissing and poetry and stuff?”

“What’s poetry?”

“Nevermind.” Gan signaled the serving girl for something stronger than chocolate.

Link punched his arm. “I was kidding. Don’t be like that. I couldn’t kiss  _ Saria _ , she’s my  _ friend _ . That would be  _ weird _ . Ruto - eiyugh, fish breath! Her teeth are wicked sharp too. The fairies tickle though.”

“What.”

“Not little ones. The Great Fairies. Kissing and stuff makes their magic work better,” said Link with a shrug.

“Uh,” said Gan, brilliantly.

“They always want me to stay with them, like Ruto. But I don’t think they marry? I dunno. They’ve never wanted that kind of promise.”

“Did you - like it? Do you like avadha and fairies the way they like you?”

“I dunno. I didn’t really think about it much in the befores. It was just kindof part of - doing other things. Restoring shrines and trying to save people and stuff,” said Link, resting his chin in the cup of his hand. “The people I lived with in the before of the first, they didn’t do any of that. I never thought about it seriously, you know? Getting married. Living with some weird  _ girl _ all the time.”

_You live with me_ _though_. _How much weirder could anything ever be?_

“What about you? Did you have a girlfriend when you-”

“I left home at  _ six _ ,” snapped Gan, harsher than he really meant to.

Link winced. “Sorry. I forgot. It gets tangled sometimes. Which things happened when. Things I never asked when I should have. I look at you and I - sometimes I forget that you - can’t remember - and I-”

“It’s ok,” said Gan, catching his other hand gently. “Maybe I did. Someone nice. Who wouldn’t want presents from a king, right?”

Link laughed, pressing his hand once before he pulled away to accept the next drink from the terrified serving girl.

They spoke of nothing and drank half the night away, and it was a minor miracle they made it back to their rented room without either one cracking their head on the cobbles.

A few hours later Gan considered it a somewhat more significant blessing to manage the stairs to and from the lavatory successfully. Twice. 

Except Link kept rolling over into his spot when he got up, and the third time? Link somehow managed to simultaneously tangle himself in the blankets and sprawl across the entire bed. Gan swore at the frigid false dawn, wrestling his unconscious friend more or less to the middle and crawling onto the edge himself. He wedged his foot against the wall and wrapped his hand around the side beam to keep from falling.

The blankets were a lost cause until Link rolled over, and then Gan decided he rather wished he hadn’t. Except - he was warm. And he sighed in his sleep when he slipped his hand around his waist. 

Gan closed his eyes and counted breaths.

Link wriggled even closer, mashing his face against his back. 

Gan lost count, and started over. Thinking of nothing. Ignoring the heat. The softness of the blankets. The perilous edge of the bed. 

The tightness in his throat. 

The discordant twang in his ear.

The deep and bitter need to set his teeth upon his arm - but if he let go of the bed - 

Gan gripped the wooden beam so hard his whole hand ached. 

Link sighed in his sleep, content. 

More than content.

Apparently.

Gan swore a blasphemous oath under his breath, staring fixedly at the darkness.

Not moving.

_ Be good. Be good. _

Absolutely frozen.

_ Be good. Be good. _

His heart drummed a desperate tattoo.

Lightning coiled around his spine.

“Oh no,” whispered Gan.

His wicked flesh betrayed him. 


	50. Chapter 50

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 7

Winter lingered over Termina in the twenty-second year of peace in this time. Not that the season was  _ harsh _ \- they’d seen far colder and more hazardous winters than this. Day after day, the sun couldn’t shine enough to melt much of anything, and then it would snow just enough to undo the warmth of the day before.

Three weeks to equinox, Link decided to hang the new canopy anyway. The sooner they got the midship deck under cover, the sooner they could move the table back to the hold and make  _ sure _ Gan saw more than two hours of sunlight in a day. 

“Come  _ on _ already. I need you to help me get the cables run,” he called below.

“I don’t see why we have to do this  _ now _ ,” grumbled Gan, stomping up every step. “The weather is shit and I’m pretty sure the rigging’s still iced over.”

“I’ve gloves on. Anyways if the weather were fine we wouldn’t need a canopy,” countered Link, hefting a coil of rope.

Gan rolled his eyes and groaned. “You shouldn’t climb with the full weight of that. Give it here.”

Link made a face, but handed over the main coil, keeping a few loops for himself. “You just want an excuse to stand under the ratlines and say I’m gonna slip.”

“Better you crack a rib for me when I break your fall than you break your neck because you’re too stubborn to wait until thaw,” grumbled Gan.

“Don’t be such a worrywort. There - pulley’s threaded. I’m gonna fix it here so we have plenty of slack on the other end, and we can haul it tight after. Wait, where are you going? It crosses longways.”

“We didn’t buy enough sail or grommets for a pavilion-style quadrangle,” said Gan with a frown. “I don’t want it to catch puddles and rot like our first canopies.”

Link rolled his eyes, hopping down from the rail. “We’re not running any sideways.”

“Athwart,” corrected Gan.

“Whatever, bookworm. I want to get two sets up along the rail before we run a pair for the peak, and if it stays dry today, let’s try for the sail too.”

Gan squinted at the pulleys Link had spent a whole day securing. “That’s a clumsy design. The canopy should slope fore and aft so we can fill the waterbutt-”

Link caught his hand mid-gesture, amused that once again something so small interrupted him so effectively. “Twenty years, and you still think in the way of the desert. We don’t need to catch every raindrop. Even if I’m away Outside, between the cistern and the fish pond, you have as much fresh water as you could ever need, without even leaving the ship. If those aren’t pure enough, there’s a spring in the deserted shrine.”

“Twenty-two,” rumbled Gan.

Link laughed, pointing to the pulley he wanted to thread next. “Let’s build something my way for once. Wait till it’s done before you set yourself on hating it.”

“I don’t  _ hate _ it,” grumbled Gan, following him down the deck. “I just don’t  _ like _ it. Sure, it keeps snow and rain out of the hold, but it’ll still be in full sun three quarters of the day.”

“That’s half the point,” said Link. “And - set. Tighten this or run all the low cables first?”

“Let’s run all six in case the snow starts up again. Better to rig the tension on the same day. And that’s another reason it’s a bad design. Light neutralizes the chains.”

“Oh not  _ that _ again,” groaned Link. “It’s not good for you to hide in the dark all the time.”

“I’m not  _ hiding _ . Do you want to argue or do you want to get this done today? Up with you - and pay attention to what you’re doing damnit. I’m going to kick your pale ass from here to Ikana if you keep playing show-off and fall.”

Not only did they get all the main cables threaded, Gan persuaded him it would be faster to raise the canopy if they rolled it up and lashed it between the peak cables before hauling it all up as one. Link was almost certain the wind would carry it away when they tried to unroll it, even with guide ropes strung around the lower cables. Gan stripped to the waist, his muscles straining under the enchanted chains as they worked side by side to haul in every possible inch of slack, and then another after that. 

He anchored the guide ropes on himself when Link climbed up to unfurl half the sailcloth, swearing it wouldn’t be of any use to tie until he pulled the canvas taut. Anyone less massive - or less stubborn - would surely have been pulled off his feet for the attempt.

It worked - they finished the whole project by late afternoon. Gan didn’t act happy about it though - he kept trying to shrug it off as some simple mechanical principal of pulleys and counterweights. 

Link poked at his sculpted abs, pretending to be looking for gears and springs until he allowed at least a  _ little _ snort of amusement.

He tricked Gan into lifting a grain crate, swearing it was one of the nearly empty ones and that he wanted it for storage below. Link wasn’t really surprised when Gan managed to get the thing on his shoulder. The shocking part was that he didn’t seem to  _ notice _ what he’d done until he set it down next to the hopper above the foreword hold and pried the lid off. He stared at the grain in mute contemplation until Link poked his side.

“The word you’re looking for is amazing,” he teased. “Come on, admit it. You’re strong.”

Gan grumbled, dropping the lid back in place. “You lied.”

“Just a little. You should be  _ proud _ of this stuff. Look, stand like this. Good - raise your fists like so - turn your wrist and-”

“This is  _ ridiculous _ ,” grumbled Gan, dropping his arms to his sides. “I didn’t ask to be - like this. I didn’t  _ earn _ being tall and heavy.”

“So? You earned those muscles fair and square. Lemme get the key for those arm cuffs so you can  _ really _ flex _ - _ ”

“These chains are not a  _ game _ Link,” said Gan, catching his wrist. “They’re not  _ pretty _ , they’re not  _ good _ , and the whole  _ point _ is that they should never  _ ever _ come off.”

Link sighed, regretting that he ever promised to bring him those bones. “I know. I was just thinking - when you flex, it looks like they hurt. And I don’t like that.”

Gan only grunted, releasing his wrist and crossing to where he’d left his shirt and sweater.

“That’s not what I meant,” said Link.

Gan paused, casting him a sidelong glance.

“Hiding your cuts and scrapes and bruises under cloth and pretending nothing happened doesn’t make the hurt go away. It’s not the  _ seeing _ it that bothers me,” said Link, searching his golden eyes for any sign of understanding. “What I mean is - if they hurt when you use your strength, they’re too tight, and they  _ need _ to come  _ off _ . At  _ least _ until we add enough rings that they don’t hurt anymore.”

Gan said nothing, his expression completely opaque. He looked away, then at his own arm, twisting and flexing in small experimental movements. He shrugged and shook his head.

“Nope. Show me for real.”

Gan worked his jaw, his eyes sliding away as he curled his arm, muscles rising into sharp prominence. It seemed at first that the chains dug terribly deep, but now that Link could watch him move, he saw how Gan’s body had changed to accommodate them in the way a ring sculpts grooves around the finger it rests on every day. 

“It - doesn’t actually hurt. It looks worse than it is,” mumbled Gan.

Link whistled in amazement. “Then what are you holding back for? Let’s see you stretch in the sunlight.”

Gan averted his eyes again, shuffling his feet like he didn’t feel steady. Almost like was embarrassed to be looked at. Like he was ashamed of his magnificent body. 

Link set his fist on his hip, circling around as Gan experimented with tentative little stretches. “Does it bother you? Your shape? The way you hate your whiskers?”

Gan shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

“Try me. I’m not book smart  _ at all _ , but I’m not  _ stupid _ . I do kinda know a  _ lot _ about living in a skin that doesn’t feel like home,” said Link quietly. “If you don’t like me saying you look good, I’ll stop.”

“That - isn’t what I meant. And I don’t  _ hate _ having a beard either. It’s just - weird. I feel strange when something makes me notice it. How different we are,” mumbled Gan.

“Different isn’t bad. It just is. Look,” said Link, hauling his own sweater over his head and striking an overwrought martial pose. “Huh. My arms were actually bigger when I lived at the farm. I thought climbing around out here would be the same but - oh. Ha, lookit below my elbow though. Like twisted cable.”

“Hn. That’s nothing,” said Gan, mirroring his stance exactly.

Link laughed, and they fooled around posing until they got cold standing topside. Gan didn’t want to move the table yet, so they showered and lazed about with tea and nut cakes in the weaving room until the day’s hard work caught up with them. 

Link woke twice - the first because he was shivering. Gan wouldn’t be persuaded to rise and move to the bedroom - he was probably stiff and achy from the ropes and too proud to admit it. So Link pulled mostly-finished blankets down from the shelves and made a warmer nest around them. 

The second time, he woke so slowly he wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t dreaming. He felt warm and comfortable and lazy, and completely disinterested in  _ being _ awake. 

His ear felt a little ticklish - and Gan’s breath stirred his hair - and then he shifted, and the cold air snuck between them, and he realized his ear was wet. Which didn’t make any sense for about half a second. 

Gan nuzzled close and kissed his ear again.

Link’s heart stopped. He was completely awake now.  _ Not a dream. He’s - that - is his tongue. On my neck. Goddess bright. His teeth. His lips are - tickling my ear. _

Gan said nothing - and his breath stayed slow. He  _ moved _ slowly, but not with a furtive tone. More like - the lazy way he stretched in the mornings, still half asleep.

Link’s skin turned taut and prickly and overwarm the way it always did when he startled awake. He tried to calm it, stretching little bit at a time, his mind racing around the intense awareness of Gan’s face pressed against the side of his own. He’d stopped with the kissing - for a moment - maybe it was just an idle dream figment. Nothing at all.

Except. 

When Link tried to shift and tense his core in an effort to relax - he realized his body was tense in other ways. 

And so was Gan’s.

_ How dare you act like everything is fine when the whole town thinks you keep me for sex? _

Link froze, his panic now divided in three. Gan was pressing tighter, curled around him, his hips against his thigh. Gan nibbled his ear again, his teeth and tongue softer than any of the great fairies had ever kissed him. His hand flexed on Link’s chest, and he realized rather too late that Gan had slipped under Link’s sweater so his fingertips grazed bare skin at the bottom of the shirt placket, and the fine linen offered no barrier against the heat of his massive palm.

“Hey. Gan,” murmured Link.

On the third try, Gan breathed a sleepy “Hnn?”

“Wake up,” whispered Link.

“Nnnuh.”

“Gan,” sighed Link. “You’re dreaming.”

“Hn. Yeah,” he murmured lazily, nuzzling Link’s ear.

“Come on. It’s a dream,” whispered Link more urgently, trying vainly to untangle himself.

_ Why do you keep me? Tell me the truth. _

“Nuhh. Sgood things,” slurred Gan, clutching him tighter.

_ Do you even know what the townspeople say? _

“Oh Gan - oof - you’re crushing me,” said Link, and meant it. Taut panic wound around his bones and drummed thunder in his ears. What if Gan noticed the reaction he couldn’t help? What if Gan woke up like this? What if he-

“Too bad,” rumbled Gan, hitching his bulk somehow even closer, trapping Link’s legs under his knee. He sighed in apparent contentment.

_ The king belongs to us, so everything he owns is ours, really. I say you need green more than him - it will make you happy and protect the people. And you’re my friend. _

Link held his breath and waited for Gan to drift into deeper sleep.

His hand drifted down Link’s chest instead.

_ How many grown men live alone with a boy? _

Link stopped him - but that didn’t wake him up. He just fumbled to wrap his hand gently around Link’s wrist in turn. Link pulled his hand higher rather than try to sort out untangling him from the sweater just yet.

Gan sighed against his ear, and there might have been a shadow of a word in it. He released Link’s wrist to press his palm flat to his chest again, a shield over his heart. 

Link felt certain he would fly to pieces if Gan kept touching him like that. Every gentleness from his ancient enemy was an arrow in his heart. Sealed away from the world without his magic, without the darkness of war over his life, without the demon’s seductive promises in his ear, this could only be his true self. 

Every harsh word, every sarcastic deflection was a  _ mask _ . 

_ I don’t want to kill you. I just need what you have. My whole life was a lie. _

Under that forbidding iron armor, under the bad decisions and the arrogant swagger, Gan’s heart was good and loving and fiercely passionate in the defense of his home and his family and friends and his vision of how the world  _ should _ be ordered.

_ I think this is why I was born so much bigger and stronger than everyone. Will you play one last game with me? I will be strong, and you will be brave, and the Maiden will be clever. You’re going to save the world. _

He’d ruined it. All of it. 

Again.

_ Don’t let your fear of another tragedy destroy the very hope you’re trying to save. _

_ His name is Rajenaya. It means hope. _

Of  _ course _ Gan developed strange obsessions and unnatural lusts - Link had cloistered him away from the world with no one else to even talk to. Ensren had warned him - but by then it was too late. 

_ Who died and put you in charge of good and ungood anyway? Take your stupid blue magic and go fix your own stupid country. _

“Gan  _ please _ ,” whispered Link.

Gan nuzzled against him, mumbling in a blurry way. “Fin’ light ’thin. Mnn oasis.”

“Gan - stop being stubborn - I have to piss, ok?” Link lied.

“Mnnnrf,” grumped Gan. 

But it worked. Gan let go.

Link rolled out of the warm nest of blankets and cushions, shivering and sick to his stomach. Gan snuggled into the cushion he’d been laying on, moving against it in lazy arcs.

Link snuck out of the cabin, embracing the frigid air. Snow was drifting down from the indifferent heavens again. He paced the deck until he couldn’t feel his fingers anymore, mind racing in useless circuits. 

_ I can’t stay here. I can’t face him like this. I did this to him - he should hate me for what I’ve done. I don’t know how to make it right. It might be too late. But I can’t - I can’t do it. I can’t watch him die. Not again. Goddesses have mercy - please watch over him. You saved him before - save him from me  _ _ now _ _. _

Link stole paper from Gan’s workroom and scrawled a hasty message. He tied a scrap of ribbon through the loop on the ocarina and bound it to the note. He stood in the hallway a long time, debating the best way to make sure he saw it. 

In the end he couldn’t find the courage to go back into the weaving room, so he laid it on the middle of the bed along with a little box of buttery honey and nut cakes he’d been saving for a treat.


	51. Chapter 51

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 7

A quiet day rolled from one horizon to the other. The cucco dozed in the thin spring sunlight. Ganondorf sat at the weaving bench until he ran out of wound bobbins to fill his shuttles. He scattered extra grain for the cucco and organized his workroom for the dozenth time. Though he dropped a hundred things, he managed to break only one: a little clay pot he kept scribing tools in while he was drafting.

At twilight, he made himself eat a bowl of heartradish soup, and the last of the batch of flatbread they’d baked. He washed the bowl and spoon, cup and table, stove and counter in silence. When there was nothing else to clean, he went abovedecks to stare out at the night. He didn’t dare climb to the crow’s nest anymore, but standing at the prow of the ship gave him almost as good of a view. 

When his feet hurt from pacing, Gan returned belowdecks to fill the wire basket with firerocks and hoist it into place under the sluicegate so he could wash without shivering. He pulled on fresh trousers and his softest sweater, and crawled into bed for the form of the thing. 

He didn’t really expect to sleep, but his back would hurt tomorrow if he didn’t rest. And maybe he would manage to pass out for an hour or two before dawn. 

It rained a little after midnight, big fat drops dancing across the deck above. Morning dawned clear and painfully bright, and once again, Link did not come home.

Gan finished the fine red cloth on the big sourwood loom, and Link did not come home. 

The mean blue cucco died suddenly one morning, and two of the speckled hens stopped giving eggs. Link did not come home. 

Gan finished the tapestry for the bedroom - an apple tree in glory - and spent three days securing all the ends and stitching the cotton backing on. He went into the swamp to cut a few cedar saplings, whittling and peeling and oiling them all so he could choose the best one to hang the tapestry from.

Link did not come home. 

Every day stretched longer than the one before it. Gan unpacked the spools of green warp he’d smuggled from Clocktown and spent two days rigging and threading all four harness.

Link did not come home.

Gan sat on the edge of the bed, unfolding the note again, as if looking harder could make more words appear. 

He lingered over a glass of spirits. 

He lay down without bothering to shower first. 

He tried to keep busy. He tried not to wonder. Tried not to think.

Halfway between equinox and solstice, Gan woke with dawn, curled around Link’s favorite pillow.

The wind felt different as he climbed topside. He couldn’t quite place why - but when he caught the reflection of sun on steel where no steel should have been, that ceased to matter. The elegant Goron-forged two-hander leaned against the railing on the foredeck, the open leather harness draped casually over a rusted belaying pin. 

Link himself sat among a bunch of feed crates from town, shredding cedar branches with his fingers. He wore a strange wine-colored tunic with something like the gods’ teeth embroidered at the hem, and tight buckskin breeches tucked into brown riding boots. 

He didn’t look up - he didn’t seem to hear Gan crossing the deck. But the reflection off the blade looked real - the scent of horse sweat wafting from him smelled real. Link’s muscled shoulder under his hand felt real. 

Link continued shredding the innocent stick to pieces - but he raised those haunted blue eyes at last.

Gan dropped to one knee and pulled Link into his arms, speaking with his clumsy hands the hundred thousand fears that set their claws in his skin since the morning he woke alone. “Oh my love, oh my light-”

Link struck without warning, knocking the wind out of him. He shoved away, panting, right hand balled in a tight fist, left at his damp lips. “How  _ dare _ you start this-?”

Gan coughed, because he could not speak.

“This is  _ wrong _ . How can you touch me like that? You walked into the forest to  _ die _ rather than live with other people saying I kept you for perverted-”

“Link - shh - it’s ok,” said Gan, opening his hands, beckoning him closer. “We aren’t in that time anymore.”

“Don’t tell  _ me _ to shush Rajenaya! You said you were my friend,” shouted Link, backing away until he fetched up against the crates. “And then you turn into  _ Ganondorf _ ? The Great King of Evil, the doom of Hyrule? You tricked me - you are my  _ enemy- _ ”

“Link - calm down,” begged Gan. “That was in the before. It’s ok. You’re just getting tangled in your head.”

“I loved you as my  _ brother _ \- as my  _ son- _ ”

“Oh  _ Link _ . Please. I  _ know _ the nightmares are terrible. Just - come here. Let me help,” pleaded Gan. Whatever he’d done, wherever he’d been, even though he wasn’t bleeding  _ now _ , he must have run into some grave trouble to be in such panic.

“No! Let you trick me  _ again _ ?”

Gan clung to discipline and calm with every shred of strength he still owned. “Why would I trick you? We’re friends remember? We’ve been friends for years, right here on this ship. You brought me to this oasis, remember?

“Of  _ course _ I remember,” cried Link, his eyes reddened with grief. “I remember everything you’ve ever done. The wicked and ruthless and greedy bandit king. You killed the only father I ever knew.”

“Link. That wasn’t  _ me _ ,” said Gan softly.

“Shut up,” bellowed Link, his voice grown harsh. “You murdered  _ thousands _ , you raised legions of undead to feast on innocents, you summoned terrible monsters to corrupt every holy shrine. You imprisoned the mountain people to feed them to a dragon. You froze the river, killing so many and plunging the whole fucking country into drought. You leveled the castle to raise your own hideous tower. You imprisoned the princess. You twisted  _ everything _ -”

“Godsdamnit Link  _ listen to me _ ,” roared Gan, his temper slipping from brittle, fraying reins. “We aren’t in that time anymore. We’re  _ not _ kin, and  _ none of that was me _ . Me in the  _ now _ , me as I am  _ here _ , with you, in  _ this _ life. I walked away from that path. I gave up everything I had for this. For the Light. I sealed my magic so he can never enter the world through me.  _ That _ is the truth.”

“Truth? From you?  _ Ha _ ,” rejoined Link, cutting the air with the blade of his hand.

“I’ve never  _ once _ lied to you about anything important in this life,” snapped Gan. “You promised me the same.”

“Fine,” growled Link, curling his hands into fists. “You want the truth? You asked me how many times I’ve died because of you - _as_ _many as you’ve died for me_. That is our truth. That is our fate. You are the invader and I am the hero. Beast and hunter. Monster and champion. King of demons and chosen of the blessed sword that unmakes you.”

Gan staggered to his feet, though his insides felt like they were falling through the world. “Then why the  _ fuck _ didn’t you slay me twenty years ago and have done?”

Link gestured in frustration. “ _ Don’t _ make it worse, Gan, please.”

“Don’t you  _ Gan please _ me! If that’s all I will ever be to you-”

“That’s not what I want! That’s not what I’ve  _ ever _ wanted,” howled Link. “But the gods didn’t ask  _ me _ what  _ I _ wanted when they chose  _ me _ to stop  _ you _ .”

“To hell with the gods,” bellowed Gan, advancing one long stride. “I don’t give a  _ fuck _ what they want from me or anyone. This is about us. Here. Now.”

“ _ Don’t touch me _ ,” cried Link, sidling away, eyes pinned in panic. “How can you do that? How can you touch me like that?”

Gan swayed on his feet, lost. “The fuck, Link? What  _ happened _ to you? We’ve lived under the same roof, slept in the same bed, drank from the same godsforsaken cup for  _ twenty years _ . And then one night -  _ poof _ . Gone. It never happened? You leave me with nothing but a vague suggestion that maybe someday if I wait long enough I  _ might _ find out if you’re still alive in this time. Hour after hour, day after bloody day, asking myself what I did wrong. What piece of my soul I need to carve out to bring you back this time.”

Link retreated another step, opening his hands, pleading, frightened - but still  _ angry _ . “Why can’t you understand-? Every time I touch you I remember the hundred thousand million times I’ve been forced to kill you to stop the evil that pours into the world because of  _ you _ .”

Gan dropped his hands to his sides, wishing he hadn’t caught the gutter at the last moment all those years ago. “Fine. I - I won’t touch you. Ever. It will never happen again. I’ll build a new bed in my workroom and sleep with wax in my ears so you can scream your head off without me there to bring you out of the memory. I can braid my own damn hair and cook my own damn food-”

“Gan-”

“Or - you know - that’s too much work,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his whole face and hoping Link hadn’t noticed the runaway tears. “I meant to cut it off years ago when Nab’s braids started growing out anyway.”

“No-”

“What do you care? I’m just the monster that goes bump in the night,” snarled Gan, feeding the bitterness so the sorrow couldn’t get out. He looked up at the tranquil spring sky, knowing the timeveil stretched between. He hadn’t been able to see it since the day he put the chains on. A marvel really, that he was able to cross it into his own time at all.

“Don’t do this,” said Link, sharp with warning.

“Mother of Sands how could I be so stupid,” Gan mumbled to the distant, fickle stars. “Who could love the chosen of the great destroyer anyway?”

Link groaned. “Don’t be so fucking dramatic-”

_ “Dramatic _ -?” Gan gestured helplessly, unable to keep his eyes averted any longer. Link was crying. “I love you so much I can barely breathe when I see a real smile on your face and you  _ dare _ call  _ me _ dramatic?”

“Gan-”

Gan clenched his fists and pivoted to close the distance between them. “I’ll show you  _ dramatic _ you knife-eared jackass.”

Link yelled, and danced away from him, and yelled some more. 

Gan stayed between him and the sword. He felt more agile and rooted than he had in years - he didn’t stumble or trip or misjudge a single step. He matched Link move for move, stalking him down the length of the deck. His longer strides nibbled away at that maddening space - and at last, on the aft deck beside the glowing orb that formed the beating heart of their sanctuary, Gan caught him, wrestling him to the boards and pinning him securely.

Link howled and cursed and struggled, to no avail whatever. Gan didn’t need to do anything else. His weight leaning into the pin was enough. 

Gan closed his eyes to Link’s fury, and tried to simply breathe. Rage boiled in the shattered fragments of his soul - but neither the red haze, nor the sharp-edged shadows came for him. Only the rending pain of listening to his Light in grief and terror because of him.

A long time or a short time later, it didn’t matter which, Link ran out of strength for shouting, subsiding into hiccuping sobs. 

Gan cracked his own eyes open only enough to peek through the veil of his lashes. He released Link’s arm to wipe hot tears from his pale, pink-stained cheeks.

Link did not take advantage of the opening. 

Gan released his other arm to caress away the tears spoiling that side.

Link did not try to escape.

Gan bowed his head, cradling Link’s dear face in his hands.

Link turned his head, fitting brow and nose and cheek in the cup of one hand as he so often did in the middle of the night.

Gan’s heart stumbled.

Link sniffled and sighed, tension beginning at last to bleed from his body.

Gan gently guided him to turn his head again, to look up at his captor, to see the truth in front of his stubborn nose. 

But - the longer he stared into his endless blue eyes, the tighter the rope around his chest. So he tried to drop his gaze. Soft, elegant lips should never frown so terribly. 

He felt like butter on the tongue after a week of fasting on water and vinegar. 

He tasted of salt and apples and tea and the memory of strong spirits.

He felt like sinking into a hot bath on a cold day. 

He felt like honey tasted.

Gan pulled away, gasping for air. His heart beat once - twice - hesitant and cautious, forgetful of its task.

Link stared at him, blue eyes wide with shock.

Gan rocked back on his heels. He was still pinning the poor man. He tried to pull away with grace - hadn’t he just managed the stalk easily? - and nearly ended up on his face beside his dearest friend. 

Link watched him, frozen but for those eyes, his rosy lips still glistening from the kiss.

Gan drew his own lip between his teeth, tasting salt.

Link rolled to his knees, and  _ yelled _ .

Gan flinched, feeling his fury as a blade through his miserable gut. 

Link stopped yelling only to pant for breath - and yell again.

Gan bowed his head, waiting for him to breathe. “I - I won’t do it again.”

Link howled again, long and raw and broken.

Gan nodded.  _ He’s right. He’s always right. You’ve fucked it completely this time. _

Link pushed to his feet with a last wordless, guttural yell, and fled.

Gan ground the heels of his hands into his eyes as the rap of Link’s boots faded. He bowed before the orb that was supposed to save them all, and wept.


	52. Chapter 52

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 7

Spring in the thornbriar gardens hummed with life. Birds flirted by above the nets and glittering lacewings darted through the dappled light.  

Link sat on the worn stone bench in the heart of peace and felt rotten.

“You’re making this more complicated than it is,” said Ensren, taking his cold tea away. He tossed it under a thornbriar and poured him a fresh cup with splash of applejack stirred in. “Do you love him?”

“How can you ask me that-?”

Ensren raised a brow, thrusting the cup into his open hands. “Why? Because he’s a man?”

“Yes! No! I don’t know,” stammered Link. “Because it’s  _ him _ !”

“Answer the question, Vohatyr. With your  _ mortal _ heart, and leave Hylian bigotry out of it,” said Ensren, stolid and implacable. “Do you love him?”

Link drained half the cup and felt only emptiness. “He’s my  _ brother _ .”

“Hn,” said Ensren, savoring his own tea. “Only in the poetic definition of the word.”

“He called me  _ father _ .”

“Not in this life,” said Ensren.

“He is my enemy.”

Ensren tipped his head, hazel eyes bright with challenge. “Are you sure?”

Link slumped lower on the bench, staring into his cup. “I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

Ensren grunted, leaning back against the gnarled plum tree.

Link drained his cup and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Oh Ensrie my brother. How do I fix  _ this _ ?”

Ensren shrugged. “What is there to fix? Love is a gift of the Light.”

“But he  _ kissed _ me,” wailed Link.

“We’ll get to that in a minute,” said Ensren, completely unruffled. “Sit back down. Drink more tea. Feel yourself in this moment. Now. Here. In this life.”

Link wept, and tried to drink tea he couldn’t even taste because it would make Ensren happy. “That’s what he said.”

“With good reason. You have to remember his entire experience is solely anchored in this life in the same way this one little stretch of land is the whole world to our animals. If the Great Deku hadn’t invoked the divine into you as he did, it would have been the same for you. So pretend for a moment it is.”

“I can’t,” said Link, burying his face in his free hand.

“You must,” countered Ensren, merciless. “Anything else is  _ wrong _ .”

“I don’t know how,” sobbed Link.

“Do you love him?”

“I don’t know the first thing about love,” cried Link in frustration. “I am  _ the hero _ . I know how to hit things. I know how to run and jump and ride and follow orders.”

“I think you know more than you admit,” said Ensren, unruffled by his outburst. “Tell me again the story of the first life you became friends.”

Link only sobbed. 

Ensren sat beside him and pulled him into a tight hug. “I know it hurts. You’ve been running from this truth a long time.”

“You don’t understand,” wailed Link into his shoulder. “When he turned, and I saw the scarab crown - I knew I  _ had to _ stop him - but - oh  _ why _ did it have to be  _ Rajo _ ?”

Ensren rubbed his back in slow circles, his voice gentle. “You loved your Rajo. But  _ that _ Rajo is long dead, Vohatyr. No matter how many times you find his spirit reborn in another, you can’t undo what you did then.”

“It hurts,” sobbed Link desperately. “It  _ hurts _ Ensrie - make it  _ stop _ .”

“You have to let him go. Let him rest. You aren’t in that life anymore. You are here. Now. With us. In this time. Don’t let your grief over an ancient mistake destroy the very hope you long to save.”

“You don’t understand. I’ve made so many - I did a  _ bad thing,”  _ Link whispered. “I didn’t mean to - they said it was right - they said it would make everyone happy-”

“Shh. I know,” said Ensren, taking his cup away and wrapping him tight again. “But the gods have given you another chance to get it right. In this life. In the now.”

Link nodded, trying to believe in it.

“Do you love  _ Ganondorf _ ?”

Link wept.


	53. Chapter 53

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 7

The beam creaked and complained as Ganondorf fought to lay down one last pick of dark green. It had to be perfect. Spirals of new grass and old pine stretched out under his hands, locked forever in perfect harmony.

He returned the bobbins to the rack, and the shuttles to the felt-lined drawers beside all the others. He traced Link’s perfect dovetail joinery, savoring the pain. 

In a month, he’d be twenty-eight. 

Gan poured a glass of Tears and stood on the foredeck, watching the cucco dig through the fading salad garden they’d built in tiered boxes full of rich marsh soil.

He finished the hemstitching and cut the warp threads away just before midnight. He swept the weaving room and tossed the dust and scraps through the timeveil. He ate the last of the food that wouldn’t keep in the cold room and put the kitchen back in order.

He scoured the washroom and then himself, plaiting his long hair in a simple three strand queue. He packed the combs and sweet oil in beside the ocarina and his most precious books, and dressed in his plainest clothes.  

The casket of cursed bone beads and carved hematite and extra bloodsteel rings he wrapped in all the black silk he still had and locked it all in an iron chest in his workroom along with the tools he’d made to forge them with, and his notes, and a letter of warning in every language he knew.

Even with his war bow, it took nine tries to strike the shining orb from the reed boat. He doubted he could have even managed in daylight.

He ran out of provisions a couple days from town still, but he hadn’t really felt hungry in months. He rationed the last of the Tears, finishing the bottle just before he reached the south gate. 

The guard remembered him. They all remembered him. Red-haired Dinauru the Witch with the shrimpy half-brother. 

Everyone but the innkeeper wanted to know where the little hero was this time. 

Gan visited the tailor and the bakery and the curiosity shop and the bar - no one had seen him. Not even the children. 

He ran into Ensren on the fourth day in town. Literally. Ripped his trousers in the fall too. Ensren tried to deflect his questions, dragging him to a tavern and making him eat and drink tasteless nonsense while he tried to argue Gan out of his search. 

Gan couldn’t shake him without violence. 

Everyone cringed away from him after Ensren fell, unconscious. The curiosity shop gave him a better price on the two-stone sledge after that. No one followed him into the alley.

The desolate garden around the ruined old house remained as overgrown as ever, riotous with weeds and spreading safflina. Gan tried to be grateful he couldn’t hear the lost spirits as he hunted for tracks. For patches of disturbed ground. For any sign whatever.

The rusted, spiked bloodsteel padlock held against his blows. The cellar doors did not.

He expected the musty smell, the webweavers and the mushrooms. He didn’t expect the charred table pushed against a stone wall, draped with ragged cloth too filthy to know its original color, except where thread-of-gold once brightened it in the undulating elegance of the spirit roads.

Three clay bowls sat in a line stop it, each heaped with withered, dessicated apples.

Gan tried to lift the dusty veil away from the wall with his bow - it fell to pieces, leaving him to stare down three ornate masks. One Zora. One Goron. One Deku Scrub. 

He lifted the one in the middle - nothing but wood and paint and cloth and polished stones. Except it didn’t have nose vents or eye slits or ribbons to tie it with. The unpainted inside was sculpted with weirdly sensitive proportions. Like it would hug the planes of the wearer’s face so well it wouldn’t need a string. 

He lifted it for a closer look.

At first he thought it a child’s mask. But that couldn’t be right. The hollow seemed to have the shape of  _ his _ face. 

“Impossible,” he told the mask, turning it over. 

Sad amber eyes stared back at him. The longer he looked at it, the more it seemed to be a portrait, rather than a type. All of them were individualized like that - scarred, slightly asymmetrical, imperfect.

Gan turned the mask over again.

He raised it.

The intense physicality of the shattering, tearing pain reaching into his skin overwhelmed him. The bow burned his hand. The sledge burned against his back. Fire wreathed his limbs, and ice crashed through his veins. Spectral claws cracked his ribs open. The world wobbled and fell dark but for weird little glimmers of violet and yellow-green. 

Gan fled back to the surface, stumbling over stairs and roots and fallen stone. The garden rioted around him, a blaze of color and light and  _ noise _ . The juniper gossiped with the horseradish and thornflowers over the nodding heads of the chittering safflina, and the lightning-blasted oak moaned and grumbled like a senile old man.

Gan tried to scrub his eyes of the hallucination.

That’s when he realized his hands had become like gnarled roots.

Ganondorf screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of a spooky chapter in time for Halloween! (Totally unplanned.)


	54. Chapter 54

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 7

The clear waters of the laundry pool shimmered in the twilight. Link pressed his back against the rough bark of the crabapple tree and turned the smooth white marble cat over and over in his fingers. Long ago Rajo told him it was a talisman against the black wind - deadly storms that brewed somewhere in the depths of the uncharted wastes of the Sand Sea. Link learned later the Gerudo people barricaded themselves in heavy stone fortresses and caves when the black wind rose. Any creature without shelter, any construction of wood or soft stone would be scoured to bone and dust by those winds.

Everything else Rajo had brought him that night as bribes for the fierce deity to stay away from his country had been a treasure except for that. Stolen royal jewels and rare books. A goldenhorn bow and fine arrows reserved for the best hunters. Expensive paper and pens and brushes, luxurious wool and a spindle of precious thornwood all meant as grave goods for high-ranking ancestors.

And one common carved pebble.

A token, only worth five rupee for the sculptor’s time notching it into the rough suggestion of a sleeping cat. Every Gerudo child had one - and lost dozens of them. But this one was worn smooth already when Rajo gave it to him, the shallow dip between the cat’s belly and paws stained gray. To blur the form that much would have needed thousands and thousands of hours of small fingers worrying at it.

But these talismans weren’t heirlooms. Hundreds of them ended up in the refuse pits, and the only ones he’d ever seen left as grave goods lay at the tombs of very small ilmaha, and those were pristine. Sometimes even carved of precious stones, if the mothers were wealthy or high ranking raiders.

All the rest made a weird kind of sense - offerings meant to seduce a powerful war spirit into the service of darkness. This  _ one thing _ didn’t fit into the puzzle of Ganon incarnated in Rajenaya.

 

_ I am still human. _

_ You don’t have to be sad anymore - you’re my friend. _

_ I love you so much I can barely breathe when I see you smile. _

_ I don't want to hurt her. I want to kiss her so the gods will love us too. _

_ You have to do what I say or bad things will happen. I have given up everything for the Light, and all it ever does is take more. _

_ It’s not stealing if it’s to save people. Anyway, Hyrule does worse things. Come with me - it’s time to be a hero.  _

 

“Why would he give me this? It’s just a rock,” Link asked the water.

“Maybe it was special to him,” said Ensren softly. Link hadn’t heard him approach, but he hadn’t really been paying attention. “Did you ever ask?”

“It’s just a common worry stone. To keep children quiet during a storm. He said it was a talisman but it doesn’t have magic,” said Link, rolling his thumb over the stained hollow.

“You said he is always a sorcerer. Maybe in his hands, it  _ was _ magic. The strongest protection spells are the ones you believe in,” said Ensren, planting himself in the dappled shade beside the tree.

Link shook his head. “He was seven when he gave this to me, in the time of the veiled stars, before I knew it was him.”

“Ah,” said Ensren, nodding.

Link frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Ensren held the silence a long time, watching the twilight reflected in the quiet pool. “The treasures of children and the pure of heart are different than those of grownups. I’m no priest, but I think when you understand just what he was willing to pay to save his people from the wrath of the Ferocious One, that’s when you’ll be ready to see the answer to the puzzle you’ve spent countless incarnations gnawing on.”

Link sighed, closing his hand around the smooth marble. “Well anyway. I can’t go back to the ship until I figure out-”

“I don’t think it’s going to matter in this life,” cut in Ensren. He turned, holding out an enormous black recurve bow that could only belong to one person in the world.

Link scrambled to his feet, throat closing.

“I thought it was good fortune, seeing him in the street today. He wouldn’t come with me - wouldn’t hear reason. He insists on searching for you. I tracked him to the haunted ruin on the northwest side of town-”

“No - not again,” begged Link. 

Ensren shook his head. “Not that. Not yet, anyway. I’m pretty sure he went in the cellar - that’s where I found his bow - but he’s vanished. Not a single footprint leading out of there in the dust or the dirt.”

“Which mask is missing?”

“I  _ thought _ those might have something to do with you,” said Ensren, all softness gone from him as if it had never been. 


	55. Chapter 55

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + ?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Completely serendipitous that this section fell on Halloween, but it works! Have a slightly spooky chapter. <3

Time stopped making sense. Daylight hurt, but his chains burned worse in the dark. He wasn’t sure how he still had them when nothing else remained the same. He couldn’t see the face of the great clock, much less read it. He couldn’t make any of the humans or Zora or Goron understand him, and he could barely follow their babble anyway. The Deku in town held an amazingly low opinion of what they called ‘squishies’ and their obsession with measuring and cutting and walling things off according to arbitrary and untrustworthy _numbers_.

When he realized that he couldn’t stay awake in one go from dawn to twilight of the same day, the wild and dazzling variance of light and shadow made a horrible kind of sense. He managed at last to thread his way through the sprawling and now completely unfamiliar city to the fairy shrine in the north quarter.

Everything seemed strange through his changed eyes, but the shining, misshapen figure floating above the pure spring numbered among the weirdest sights so far. And then it spoke!

He tried to ask her for help, but she said she needed him to bring her all the shards of her soul first - so he went hunting through the enormous, _loud_ city for more shining creatures like her. When he brought the last shard to the spring, she reassembled herself into a glittering woman with dragonfly wings. He wanted to say she was beautiful, but he couldn’t wrap words around what he actually saw. Her wings though - they fluttered with grace and brilliance and - somehow - the promise of sweet nectar and life bubbling up through his roots and-

“This is insane,” he whispered, kneeling in the sacred waters. If it could be said he had knees in this strange body.

The dragonfly woman laughed. “There, all better. You should remember to eat your radishes, dear child. Vegetables are good for you. If you grow tired again, you must come see me at once, or find one of my sisters.”

“Madame, it is not _all better_ , as _I_ am still a vegetable. If you cannot unweave this spell, for the love of Light tell me who can,” said Gan, closing his eyes so he didn’t have to see his ugly reflection.

“A vegetable? Oh dear, my sight isn’t what it once was,” giggle the dragonfly woman. “That naughty child on the moon danced far too long for all of us. My sister in the south knows many things about forest magic. Perhaps she can help you.”

“The shrine in the southern swamp is empty,” said Gan, and the words left sharp-edged grit on his tongue. “Has been for years.”

“Don’t fret so, dear child. If she is become too busy for us, then you could ask my younger sister in the eastern mountains.”

“I cannot go so far like this,” said Gan, a corner of his mind infuriated by the pathetic whimpering noise his traitorous body made at the very suggestion.

The dragonfly woman laughed. “That’s _quite_ a curse. Have you tried apologizing to the witch you offended?”

“I _am_ the witch,” said Gan.

The dragonfly woman laughed. “Oh dear, I forgot how _dry_ the golden people are! None of you come visit anymore, and I do miss your sharp little jokes. I wonder if the old witches are still living in your forest? Mortal time is _such_ a tangle. No one is better for a curse than a witch. Or is it better _at_ a curse? I can’t remember the proverb. If you grow tired in your search, you must promise to come see me again. And don’t forget about vegetables!”

Gan kept his mouth shut until he reached the central plaza. He wanted to scream and rage, but indulging would only tire him out and confuse the humans.

“No - don’t start that again. _I_ am still human,” he growled. Or tried to growl. Or whatever.

His outburst woke one of the business scrubs. The ensuing argument woke the rest, and one of them lost their patience. They dove under a pile of leaves, only to rise again on whirling flower petals. Sparkling pollen drifted in the air behind them as they flew over the houses and shops - and thick city walls.

Gan didn’t bother trying to count days until he too learned how to soar upon a flower petal. He’d hoped that once outside he would be able to mark some change in the weather or the season - or find his way back home.

The flower petal wilted long before he reached the swamp.

When he woke from yet another restless nap under a pile of leaves to see his mothers standing over him, he felt certain he was dead.

“Would you look at that, Koume? It shivers like a lost kitten.”

“Indeed Kotake, it will drop all its pretty little red leaves if that keeps up. Here, are you strong enough to hold a bottle on your own little seedling?”

“I am _not_ a seedling,” groaned Gan, vainly trying to assert discipline over his changed flesh. Or pulp. Or whatever it was he was made of now.

“Sapling then. You’re wasting your time Koume. It will only spill the potion if you let it do for itself. Give it here.”

“Potion? What are you doing-? No, I will never drink another of your vile brews,” cried Gan, scrambling away for all he was worth. Which admittedly wasn’t much.

“Tcha. It’s not _poison_ you addle-pated fool. Stop struggling and listen to Kotake.”

“Addle- _branched_ is closer I think,” said Koume with a wicked cackle.

“Mother, please. Let me go - you don’t know what you’re meddling with,” begged Gan - but Kotake bound his feet in ice, and Koume held up a tiny dancing flame in her gnarled hand until his body screamed against his will.

Kotake dumped slimy, sour potion onto his tongue, snickering. “Would it do any good to hold his nose?”

“Can’t kill him any faster,” said Koume with a shrug. She doused her flame and clapped her hand over his nose - or where his nose should have been - or whatever. It didn’t stop his breath at all, but the blind panic of landing himself in their clutches in this state-!

When he woke again, he thought he was alone. It was quiet, and it smelled like the kitchen at home. Or like radishes, anyway, which was almost the same thing anymore. He stared up at the reed mats strung above the rafters and tried to remember where he was.

“The sapling isn’t going to barf dead crickets on my clean floor again is it, Kotake?”

“I put a bowl out this time Koume,” answered the other.

“Goddess bright please tell me I’m dead,” moaned Gan.

“Not yet, but we can fix that if you like,” cackled Koume.

“You’re scaring it again,” chided Kotake, bending over the end of the bed to stare down at him. “My dear sister has a _wicked_ humor. You’ll forgive her. Now - will you take your medicine like a good little sprout this time or do I need to cast a spell again?”

“If you can understand me Mother - for once in your life have mercy and _don't_ ,” said Gan.

“Of _course_ we old hags can understand you,” chided Koume. “But I’ll pretend I don’t if you call me mother again. Ew!”

“Didn’t the old tree you came from ever teach you not to insult witches? Hmpf. As if we would ever bother with gardens when there’s a whole forest to grow it better with far less work,” grumped Kotake, uncorking a fresh bottle of fizzing potion.

He couldn’t tell what kind, but nothing about color had made any sense in days. Or weeks. Or however long it had been. He drank the brew meekly, and he did feel a little better afterwards. He didn’t ask what was in the soup they offered, and it was probably best he never know. He ate it anyway.

“Now then,” said Koume. “You must be a brave little sprout to come to the corner of the forest where the most powerful mushrooms grow. You have a name, sapling?”

“I know this must - seem strange to you m- er. Honored Rova. Given that I’m - like this. But. Ganon-” he began.

Both of them shrieked in unison and threw clods of dirt at him until he cowered behind the box-bed and stopped trying to speak.

“Foolish as an acorn this one,” huffed Kotake.

“Bad enough it swans about wearing iron and then it thinks to utter _that name_ where anyone could hear it? You’re a cute little sprout, but you are dumber than a sheep,” said Koume.

“Uh,” said Gan, brilliantly.

“What are you doing out here anyway? Your city’s on the other _other_ side of the swamp,” said Kotake.

“I - got lost? I don’t understand - I know I look strange but you can _hear_ me - don’t you remember your own ilmaha? Rajolaan?”

“Never heard of him,” said Koume.

“I’m _pretty_ sure I’d remember getting knocked up by a tree,” cackled Kotake.

“Mother of Sands lend me patience - how long have you been living out here? When did you leave the desert? How long after I vanished?”

“If we did, then you’re kind _small_ for an ancient stick,” said Koume.

“That’s what she said,” snickered Kotake.

Gan thunked his head against the side of the bed until they were done snickering at their own tasteless jokes. “I - was once known as Rajenaya ilmaha Rova, before I went into exile twenty-two years ago. I think. I forged these chains to change my stars - but I - still destroyed the only Light I’ve ever had. You weave your trap well, Rova.”

“Tcha. Not _our_ snare. We left the People three _centuries_ ago, little sapling. We saw the writing on the wall,” said Koume.

“Technically, in the entrails, but that was a messy business. She would have been a _fine_ chief, Elara. If only she hadn’t lost her beloved, she would never have fallen for their lure. I’m sure of it,” said Kotake.

“Three hundred - it’s not possible I’ve been cursed so long,” said Gan, hoping he was right. “Who served as the Exalted Sun when you left?”

“Ceeja avadha Varan, nasty minded creature, bootlicking toad of those conniving council rats that she was,” said Koume.

_Exalted Ceeja died centuries ago. But I never saw any record of a chief or elder or Roc named Elara._

“Sad to say we didn’t bother to stay for the funeral. Why bother just to forget it all over a hand of seasons? No, I’ll pay the sorrow to keep the memory of Elara as she was before they made her a prince,” said Kotake.

Gan sat on the edge of the bed before he could fall over, and asked them questions until he couldn’t make his tongue work anymore. Koume gave him another dose of potion, and he didn’t bother arguing. When he woke again, she was gone, and Kotake was busy at her cauldron. So he crawled under the stilt-legged house to lay in the leaves and think.

Gan climbed back up to the little house when he heard Koume return. He didn’t know where to start with the question of the false kings, so instead he asked why they didn’t do anything about his mothers’ plots.

“We did,” said Kotake.

“We left,” said Koume.

“I mean - why didn’t you try to stop them? You knew they were tampering with the minds and memories of the People - why didn’t you at least _say_ something?”

They laughed, but it was not the nice sort of laugh. “You don’t go up against the Demon King. It’s not healthy.”

“They’re tied to the Sands until they’ve offered _him_ enough lives and power to pull his remains out of the void - or until they find a pure vessel that’s strong enough to survive their dark rites,” said Kotake.

“If they ever find a _willing_ one,” began Koume with a shake of her head. She clicked her tongue in censure and changed the subject. “So we left. It’s not like there’s a fence.”

“Everyone could leave and then those rats could really chew on a rock,” said Kotake. “You left, see, and you’re fine.”

“Fine? _I’m a talking plant_ ,” cried Gan.

Koume shrugged. “Nobody’s perfect.”

Gan howled in frustration, and left. Kotake flew after him some time later, and pointed him in the direction of the Deku city. The guards greeted him cordially, and the Minister of Outside came to welcome him personally, asking if he hailed from the wildwood.

He lied, and said yes, and not a moment later he was surrounded by strangers begging him for news from the east.

“It is - different than here,” he said cautiously. “Strange things are happening under the Green, and death has come to the deathless place. Do not wish to go there yourself.”

The strangers shrieked, and cried for an assembly - and swept him toward the palace to give his news before the whole court. Halfway through his halting recitation of everything Link ever said of his visits to Hyrule, he realized two faces in the crowd looked back at him with eyes black as night, their skin soft and their fur bright.

It was then he realized he’d forgotten to ask the witches about the curse.

Gan excused himself as politely as he could manage. The longer he stayed in a skin that didn’t belong to him, the harder it would be to go back. To remember he was ever anything else. He stumbled through the palace for somewhere, anywhere he could be alone with his grief.

“You’re not like other deku,” said a strange, thin voice.

Gan turned, somehow unsurprised to see one of the monkeys following him. “I should hope not. I can’t recommend it.”

“Different isn’t good or bad,” said the monkey, closing the distance. “It just is. I have a friend who is also not like other deku. I owe him a great debt, but he never will let me pay it, so I know we are still friends. He travels widely, so you might have met him, or might have not.”

“Is your friend - short?”

The monkey looked up at him, nodding once, dark eyes full of secrets.

“A bit - weird? Stubborn? Fearless? Kind?”

“All these things and more. Sings the most beautiful songs. Haven’t seen him in years though. I hope he’s ok,” said the monkey, gazing out at the royal garden.

“Yeah,” said Gan, distantly wondering whether garden was the right word in a city inhabited by plant creatures.

“We could use his magic here again,” said the monkey softly. “The keeper of the royal storehouse has fallen ill, and nothing eases her coughing. There was talk of organizing an expedition to the witches for a cure, but two other royal servants are sick now too.”

Gan fidgeted with the chains around his branches. Wrists. Whatever. “How long?”

“Weeks,” whispered the monkey. “The royal navigator is charting a course to the closest known holy spring, but it would be a long journey through broken and dangerous ground. They might not survive it.”

“There is fluid when they cough? Dark? Like what comes out if you cut them?”

The monkey cringed. “The Princess will not like to hear you ask such things, but I think that is so. The guardian of our wood says they cannot lift the miasma from their hearts. Are you a healer, where you come from?”

“I wield the shuttle and the blade,” said Gan, shrugging off the weight of probable failure. So what if it didn’t work without the bluestone flute? Singing for these strangers could hardly kill them any swifter. “Take me to them, and I will study this - contagion.”

_One and two, the golden three. Two and two, the sacred winds. Four and two, the elements in balance._

He sank his roots into the sweet humus of the infirmary garden, and filled himself with clean wind. He sang every half-remembered poem of health and healing from his homeland. He thought of the bright sound of pipes and horns on festival nights, and his voice seemed less strange to him when he imagined himself as an instrument of the music instead of its master.

_One and two. Two and two. Four and two._

No poetry for this, but it needed none. Familiar as a lullaby, a wistful memory of wholeness that bubbled up through his body and into the world.

_Thonk_.

Hollow, discordant, a wooden echo disrupting the last lingering note.

Gan swayed on his feet, dizzy, breathless, starving. He scrubbed a hand over his face, finding himself drenched with sweat in the humid evening. At his feet lay a painted mask with sad amber eyes.

The entire godsforgotten city screamed as one.

“Feet,” said Gan to no one in particular.

Half a dozen orange and gold deku squeaked and bustled their way into the tiny garden. They menaced him with their thorn-tipped spears, beeping and hopping and screeching like mad things.

Gan looked at his hands.

“What in the everliving _fuck_ just happened,” bellowed Gan.

The deku screamed, and ran, and popped themselves into the dirt. Gan turned, trying to make sense of the weird shoulder-height stockade he stood in. Big fat tapestries of woven grasses a moment ago rioted with glorious scenes of the guardian spirit blessing the Deku. Now he could barely make out vague splotches that _might_ be meant as deku, and the garish turmeric-and-woad spirals that a moment ago seemed subtle and refined.

“Okay, right, well - I can’t very well use the door,” said Gan, looking for clear patches of dirt to walk on. He tested a little weight on the steps up to the patrolway, and crushed them. A deku hiding under the stairs shrieked, and ran.

Nothing for it but to try to vault the wall directly. He peered over, bellowing a warning to any leaf piles that might be hiding deku, and pulled himself up by main force.

The wall held.

The deku on the other side managed to scramble out from under him just in time. Or he hoped they had. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever know either way.

“Sorry,” he said to the open courtyard.

He heard several deku cowering - but none dared answer.

He broke part of the next wall in scaling it, and accidentally kicked a hole in the gatehouse when he tumbled over the curtain wall. Deku guards bristled in the doorway, squealing and screeching at him as he fled towards the water.

One of the monkeys dashed between his feet, tangling him up on himself. He fell face-first in the mud at the water’s edge. The monkey hopped and chattered for attention, grabbing a stick and thrusting it in the water. Needlefish leapt at the stick, sinking venomous teeth into the green wood - and into other needlefish whose teeth were for the moment occupied.

“Oh. Thanks for the warning. I forgot,” said Gan, chagrined.

The monkey dropped the stick and hopped over to him, crouching beside him to groom his braid.

“Yeah. I’ve probably half the swamp in my hair right now,” sighed Gan, pushing up to his knees. The whole palace complex lay on an island. He would never get out with his skin intact if he couldn’t find a boat. Or make one. But how would he ever tell which trees were safe to harvest?

The other monkey tugged on his sleeve.

“Sorry. I don’t know if you can follow human speech - but I can’t understand you anymore,” he said, glancing over his shoulder to see if the palace guard meant to follow, to force him off the island.

Gan saw nothing but leaves.

The monkeys screeched at him and tugged his tattered clothing until he looked down at them again. One carried the enchanted mask in their hands.

“Oh no,” said Gan.

The monkeys beeped and nodded and shoved the mask into his hands.

Knowing the pain would come didn’t make it any easier to bear.

Gan lay in the leaves a long time, staring up at the spangled, whirling night sky.

“How many times have you endured this torment, my light? What demon wove this terrible magic? Why?”

The night gave him no answer.

When he found the strength to stand again, the monkeys helped him back into the palace with murmurs of encouragement. They shouldered the burden of answering everyone’s urgent questions about the giant with the evil eyes, and helped along the tale of how Dinauru of the Wildwood worked a great magic to heal the plague, drawing the jealousy of a wicked demon, and by clever and secret ways, lured him to the water and there slew him.

Gan held his tongue through the feast, and drank ambrosia and honey until he passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited 11.13 when I realized I completely derp'd on which poetic transcription of the song I meant to use. Gan is playing the Song of Healing, _not_ Soaring. =_____=


	56. Chapter 56

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 9

One set of bootprints marked the middle of the snow-covered garden path. The beat fell unevenly, and mud stained the churned-up snowbank beside the lightning-blasted oak. From there to the cellar, a third divot traveled with the mark of heeled boots. 

The dark cellar under the burned house lay open, its doors shattered and buried in ice, every stair rimed and treacherous.

An enormous man in tattered clothing crouched in the middle of the floor, staring at three painted masks on the charred wall. Alone of the things in that wretched place, the masks showed not one smudge of dust or grime.

“I am not the hero you need,” said the man to the masks, his voice like a poorly-carved grindstone. “I know you can hear me - and even without spirit eyes I know you are bound here against your will. I would lay you to rest if I could - but what can I do that Link could not? You must find peace on your own.”

The man sighed, and took a pouch of nuts from his fraying belt, counting them evenly into all three stone bowls. He sat in silence a long time, as if he waited for the dead to answer him.

“I no longer have magic, nor can I hear you. I can’t even see your curse to study it,” he said. “If I had known years ago, I  _ might _ have tried - but even for you I wouldn’t have risked drawing his attention. Can’t you understand? Preventing the Great Destroyer from entering the mortal world is more important than anyone. A hundred million souls rest on him not being able to find me.  _ Ever _ .”

The masks gave no answer.

An owl cried in the garden above, and at last the man roused from his meditations. He collected a stout deadfall branch from beside the stairs, and climbed out into the swiftly falling twilight. The pearl moon rose over leafless branches and snow-kissed rooftops as he made his unhurried way to the open plaza. He ignored the cowering street vendors and huddled gossips, angling toward a seedy bar with a cheerful painting of a spotted cow over the door. A much shorter, brown-haired, broad-shouldered man in blue came out of that same door as he attempted to go in it.

The smaller man whooped with joy when he looked up into the gaunt face of his obstacle, and promptly staggered him with a kinsman’s embrace. He shooed the servants away, and drew the other into the warmth and light of the common room. He cried for a round of Romani milk for the house. No one asked if he carried the money to pay for such largesse - the guests cheered and the servants tapped a fresh keg.

“You look like shit,” said the man in blue, ushering the giant to a table in the far corner, away from the noise.

The tattered giant laughed, leaning his branch against the wall. “Hn. Fair - but do I look like  _ human _ shit?”

“That is an oddly specific question,” said the man in blue, perching on a tall stool. “Where have you been, Gan?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” said Gan, his dull golden eyes creased with sardonic mirth.

“Try me,” said the man in blue.

“Beer first,” said Gan.

They spoke of nothing - not in the way of small talk between strangers, but in the companionable silence of folk wrapped in their own thoughts while craving company all the same. A server brought them mugs and two pitchers, and discreetly hurried the rare golden rupee into their apron.

“Easy on that stuff - you’ve had a round, savor the rest. When’s the last time you ate?”

“Don’t henpeck me Ensren,” said Gan. “I can still lay you out cold, just try me.”

“I’d rather hear where you’ve been for two goddamned years,” returned Ensren calmly.

Gan grunted, topping off his mug. “I - so after we fought, I went to the place I first met Li- Vohatyr. And there’s this - cellar. With masks on the wall, and bowls of withered apples under each.”

“I wouldn’t call it a  _ fight _ , but I’m more interested in this hidden shrine you found.”

Gan shook his head, averting his dull golden eyes. “I remembered he said something once about not having the right mask, so I was looking at one and - the next thing I knew, I was a plant. Yeah, laugh. Fuck you too.”

“No, sorry,” snickered Ensren. “I just - I can’t imagine it. You, a plant.”

“Me either. And I lived it,” said Gan solemnly.

“Fuck,” drawled Ensren.

“Yeah,” said Gan to his beer. “I couldn’t speak my own language, I couldn’t even make most humans understand me. I couldn’t touch iron. Even my necklace burned.”

Ensren shook his head. “Why didn’t you come to me for help, brother?”

“I couldn’t find you,” said Gan with a shrug. “I couldn’t find  _ anyone _ I knew. I thought I found my mothers once - but they were different. Strange, but kind. They didn’t know me. How much would have been different for a hundred million souls if  _ they _ had been my mothers instead.”

“Yeah,” agreed Ensren, draining his beer as if he’d find money at the bottom. “You - have been among spirits too long. You should come back home with me.”

“No,” said Gan, working his jaw. “I have to go wait for him. He’s coming back. He always comes back.”

“Gan-”

“He  _ promised _ ,” mumbled Gan.

“Gan,” said Ensren with a tone of long suffering, as if they’d had this argument a thousand times already. “I know this is hard-”

“You know  _ nothing,”  _ growled Gan, clenching his trembling fist around his innocent mug. “He is the Light, Ensrie. He is good and brave and kind and honest, even to me. Can you even begin to understand that? How he promised we would be together?  _ He doesn’t break his word _ .”

“Gan.”

“You know  _ nothing _ about  _ anything _ you thick-witted, meddling provincial fool! He  _ promised _ ,” roared Gan. Strangers turned towards the disturbance. They winced at the look in his uncanny golden eyes, and looked away again.

Ensren waited for him to breathe through his rage and reach for his beer again. Still he waited, until the mug sat empty, and Gan stood staring into it as if he’d forgotten what it was for.

“I know,” he said at last. “But sometimes life doesn’t go the way we’d like it to. Things happen. People change. Neither people nor spirits nor even gods can know everything or control everything.”

Gan shook his head. “He is my light. Without him I can’t-”

“You  _ can _ ,” cut in Ensren. “You wouldn’t be able to see it in him if you didn’t have at least a little of your own. Anyways, you said yourself his experience of time is different. It could be years before he’s ready to come back, and if I know him at all, I know he wouldn’t want you putting your life on hold while he sorts his head out.”

Gan frowned at his empty mug.

“Winter’s a bad time for trade, and I’m sure by now you’d need to stock your larder fresh. Come home with me for a little holiday from rattling about that wilderness on your own. We’ve plenty of room for you. Ma will be delighted to have a strapping young man to cook for, and my wife and I have already heard all our own conversation. Be good having a fresh mind join us for a change.”

“You don’t understand.”

Ensren sat forward on his stool, propping an elbow on the scarred table. “So tell me in smaller words.”

“I - did something bad,” murmured Gan. “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. I was just - he’d left without a word and he’d been gone for so long and I - when I saw him I couldn’t help myself.”

Entren took Gan’s empty mug away and wrapped one of his massive hands in both of his own.

“I  _ try _ to be good. I don’t  _ know _ why I still have this evil inside me,” whispered Gan, his eyes darting across the table as if he would find the answer hidden in the grain. “I thought I’d finally solved it when I sealed the magic. I’ve kept it under control for  _ years _ . I promised it wouldn’t happen again. I-”

“It’s not evil to love someone,” said Ensren.

“It is when they don’t love you.”

“He  _ does _ love you-”

“He  _ doesn’t _ and  _ can’t _ ,” snapped Gan, sparks kindling in his golden eyes. 

“That’s a lie born of shadows and fear.”

Gan shook his head. “You didn’t see his face Ensrie, when I - I forgot myself. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just - he’d been gone for so long - I needed to be sure I wasn’t dreaming. But then I touched him, and he was  _ real _ and I-”

“You kissed him,” finished Ensren.

Gan winced. “Yeah.”

“That’s a normal thing to want with someone you love. Not everyone does, but that doesn’t make it a  _ bad thing _ to want,” said Ensren, smooth and reasonable and solid. “The thing to remember is - he’s from a different place than either of us, and he didn’t have… family. As such. No one ever taught him things you and I take for granted. We all make it up as we go, but him more than most. He never had anyone to love and hold him when he was small, and that affects people. He didn’t grow up with people around to teach and guide him except those who wanted something from him. When he was still a child in every way that mattered, people took advantage of the light inside of  _ him _ . The god he serves is… not a nice god. Balance isn’t pretty, and the right thing is a lot more complicated than people want to think about.”

“You’re wrong,” said Gan, and few souls would have argued with the steel in his rough voice. “He is everything good and kind and true and-”

“You’re two of a kind, loving each other so hard you’re going to break something, but neither of you can use your  _ damn _ words,” snapped Ensren, his patience fraying at last. “You need a rest, Gan. You need to eat wholesome food and sleep in a real damn bed and be among  _ people _ for a while. It does no one and nothing any good to wall yourself up in some forbidden tower in the middle of nowhere. Let yourself settle back into the mortal world after everything you just experienced.”

“I  _ can’t _ \- what if,” he began, meeting Ensren’s hazel eyes with the unspoken fear hanging in the air between them.

“Leave him a note,” said Ensren with a shrug. “Maybe a map to our place. Leave the flute so he has something to track - hush, I already know it’s magic, and I don’t care. Come stay with us for a season, and if he doesn’t join us, we’ll cross that bridge when we meet it.”

“Ensrie - what if he-”

“Don’t borrow tomorrow’s troubles,” said Ensren.

Gan swallowed hard, and nodded.

“There’s a good man. Let’s go get you an actual meal.”

“Just - gimme a minute,” mumbled Gan, scrubbing his free hand over his face.

“Take as much time as you need brother,” said Ensren, pressing his hand. “I’m here.”


	57. Chapter 57

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 9

The marsh buzzed with vigorous life in the early summer morning. Nesting cranes on the sandbar startled at his approach, but as soon as Ganondorf pulled his weathered black boat up onto the sand, they settled down again, scolding him. Striking the orb this time had used most of the night to wrestle it into the pedestal and find a good line of sight. Even so, he wasted half his quiver.

Not that it mattered much - at the farm he didn’t need to hunt waterfowl or encroaching monsters. If he felt the need to replenish his stock anyway, well, there were plenty of rupee in the hold of the ship.

The cucco came running when he reached the upper deck, and he spoiled them with several double handfuls of sweet grain. To them, he’d only been gone a day, but that never stopped a hen from thinking she was starving.

Ganondorf collected the morning’s eggs, and pried open a whole bottle of preserved peppers and another of truffles packed in oil for an enormous omelette. He’d forgotten how much work rowing that boat around was.

He sat at the table in the hold, folding back the golden houndstooth cloth so he wouldn’t stain it doing something clumsy. Everything remained exactly as he’d left it, even the notes. Even the time of day on the ship. 

In a week, he would be thirty.

And Link had not come home.

Gan returned the kitchen and hold to perfect order, and spent the rest of the day packing chests and hauling them down to the sandbar. Ensren told him to bring only essentials. Anything he missed over the next few months, they could always fetch after harvest. Somehow, that didn’t make the decisions or the process any easier. 

He spent an hour debating whether to leave the apple tree tapestry or pack it for Ma Idrea. He wasn’t sure he  _ wanted _ to see it every day, but neither could he bear the thought of leaving it behind for strangers to loot if he didn’t hide the orb well enough.

Just before sunset, he took the sledge to the stern wall of his workroom. He wasn’t surprised in the slightest to find wool and grasses stuffed into the hollow space between it and the rusted mechanisms of the rudder. He pulled out as much as he could and tossed it through the timeveil. An hour or two after twilight, he finally pried away the battered steel panel and started on the one behind. 

Those rivets worked in his favor, and the plating of the rudder room itself had buckled long ago. Climbing with a lantern in hand up through the damaged service hatch into Link’s private cache was actually more difficult than breaking into it. 

Gan expected to find more than half a dozen crates of King’s Tears remaining, but some was better than none. The crude little bed built of overturned crates in the corner lay under a thicker layer of dust than the rest of the hidden room - but the golden puzzle box on the shelf beside it still smelled like polishing grease. And the dark, wadded-up cloak on the floor smelled strongly of horse sweat.

“You came here first that morning,” said Gan to the silence.

_ Don’t touch the puzzle box. _

Gan stuffed the puzzle and the cloak in an empty crate, and hauled everything abovedeck. The cloak he brushed out and hung in the weaving room with bundles of dried lavender and memoryleaf and fragrant cedar pinned inside. He poured himself a glass of Tears and tried to persuade himself to cook dinner.

He sat under the lamp over the empty sourwood loom to untangle the inscription on the puzzle instead. “Why would you worry about me opening this? It’s sealed by blood magic and the Will of a powerful sorcerer and the law of the oldest gods.”

Except apparently it wasn’t. Not against him.

Also, when he clicked the last switch point into place and twisted the seal, the box proved to be upside down. Golden earloops set with tiny pink stones poured out onto the floor, scattering everywhere.

And two folded pieces of creamy hot-finish paper, both torn at one edge.

_It_ _will be different this time._

Gan knelt, picking up one bright jewel. The hoop bore the right mark inside, and the faceted pink sapphire held the same cloudy streak he remembered from the earrings he offered to the fairy of the forgotten shrine years ago. As did the second earloop. And the third. And the fourth.

“All of them are exactly the same except for tarnish,” he murmured to the familiar jewels in his palm. Even if he tried to count them all, odds were some were lost down cracks in the floor or under cabinets and looms.

He unfolded the first paper, marking the familiar hurried slant of his own handwriting and the significant water damage blurring and blooming the edges of the black-brown walnut hull ink common in Hyrule.

 

> _ Da -  _ _  
>  _ _     Sorry about the horse... _

 

Gan rocked back on his heels, feeling the fragments of Link’s hints and nightmares and secrets click into place under his skin. 

_ Only time you ever were sorry for anything and you think I worried about a damn horse? You made me sleep so you could run away - I went after you, but I couldn’t find you in time to stop you walking into the forest to die. There wasn’t a fairy at the end. There was so much blood. You were only fifteen. _

His stomach churned, but he opened the second paper anyway. This one held a remarkably creative spelling of ‘no monster no sad’ in red chalk, and a crude child’s drawing of a blue warding sigil and yellow shield crystal on either side of a lopsided human figure. Drawn in green. 

_ The fire was an accident when you were small. You were looking for wild honey. You ran from a feral hive and fell and died for a while. A fairy helped until I could find you that time.  _

Gan scooped up a handful of earloops. He tumbled them in the cage of his fingers. He rubbed away tarnish with his thumb. He peered at the identical stones, the haunting maker’s marks.

_ Not again - never again. The shadows lie Jojo. Can’t bear it - not again.  _

_ Was I a good person when you saw me before? _

_ It’s complicated.  _

_ Every time I touch you I remember the hundred thousand million times I’ve been forced to kill you. _

_ When he was still a child in every way that mattered, people took advantage of the light inside of him. The right thing is a lot more complicated than people want to think about _ .

“You were right,” he said to the night, to the memory of his Light. “I would never have trusted you as my friend if you’d shown me this at the beginning.”

_ You said you were my friend. I loved you as my brother - as my son.  _

Gan picked up the puzzle box to return the morbid momentos to their hiding place - and saw a third crumpled note wedged in the bottom of the box. Crumbles of old gilded sealing wax stuck to the back of the heavy rag paper, and Gan had to drop the jewels to pry the letter out.

This one bore a crisp warding sigil in good blue lacquer on one side. The red-brown ink filling the other side shimmered with traces of gold dust. Magic ink. His own best handwriting filling the spell-woven border with Hylian words. Crisp, bone-burnished folds still trapped in the paper despite the abuse it saw after.

 

> _ Link - _
> 
> _ If you’re reading this, looking at my old things, opening this silly box I made forever ago, then I have failed you. I just wanted to fix it, like you. Make the world fair and good and right. Even if it meant leaving you forever.  _
> 
> _ I would do anything to make things right in the end - and I found the secret that makes Hyrule so powerful. They’ve done bad things with it, but it can do good things too.  _ _ I _ _ can do good things with it. Even if it’s only ever one thing. I want that  _ _ one thing _ _ that would make you proud of me. I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I have to do this. I have to try. _
> 
> _ Even though I must have failed, even if it made me a monster in the end like my uncle,  _ _ you _ _ can still save the fallen world. I know you can. You’re a hero. Heroes save people. Just keep this song safe - it’s the key that unlocks all the other keys I’ve been looking for, and leads to the place where the golden goddesses dream. _
> 
> _ Don’t be sad anymore papa.  _
> 
> _ I love you- _
> 
> _ Jojo _

 

Gan let the letter fall from his nerveless fingers. “The ancient power  _ is _ real, it  _ will _ manifest  _ anything _ , and you’ve  _ hidden _ it from me to protect a bunch of bigoted tyrants. You promised me the truth, and lied through your fucking teeth every godsforsaken day for  _ twenty two years _ . Stars, how could I be so stupid?”

_ Embrace hatred and the power you covet will destroy you. _

_ I will have the secrets of the stars and the reins of the wind and the power of a god. _

_ Down that road lies a terrible fate - choose it freely, and I cannot protect you. _

_ Then maybe you should have come sooner. _

_ I tried. There is a cost to what you seek. Your friend holds the key - it was never meant as a weapon. Seek the Light within. _

_ Anything can be a weapon. Even love. _


	58. Chapter 58

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 9

The campfire chattered merrily under the summer moonlight, tossing bright little sparks onto the wind. Link sipped herb-laced tea, vaguely confused why  _ this _ fire should seem comforting. Why  _ any _ fire would ever soothe him, when from the first nightmare he could ever remember, fire meant disaster.

“Don’t push yourself if you’re not ready,” said Ensren, joining him in leaning against the side of the heavily-laden wagon. “He’s had a hard few years too, and the last thing either of you need is more sorrows to count of a sleepless midnight. You’ll always have a home with us, whether it’s tomorrow or next year or a decade from now.”

Link raked his fingers through his hair, wincing when he caught the plait. He’d forgotten Idrea’d persuaded him to let her braid his short queue. “Might as well get the battle over with. Ganondorf doesn’t forgive anyone.”

“Have you ever asked him to?”

Link winced, and wished for applejack in his mug.

“He’ll rage and roar, and has every right to do it, but he’ll come around. He’s a smart man, and loves you deeply. You can still work out a happy ending together. Doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Doesn’t matter what anyone else does or says you ought to.”

“He’s never forgiven me anything in any life, and only said  _ he _ was sorry  _ once _ , and that was a lie,” said Link.

Ensren grunted. “You sure? What  _ does _ he say?”

Link shrugged, pushing away from the wagon to fetch more tea. “Nothing, usually. Or it doesn’t matter. Or it’s fine. But it never is. He just - keeps more secrets. Until it explodes.”

“And you dont?”

Link winced.

“You’ve lived in the desert. You  _ know _ the value they place on strength, on confidence, on power, on stealth, on a quick wit. Despite everything the witches did to make him their puppet, he lives those ideals like they’ll blow away on the wind without him, and he’s a born leader. That kind isn’t easy to live with. But that kind of passion-? Worth it.”

Link stirred honey in his tea and tried not to remember. The worry tumbled from his tongue anyway. “What if he tries to kiss me again?”

“He said he wouldn’t,” said Ensren, matter of fact.

“Worse,” confesses Link. “He said he’d eat alone and cut his hair off and sleep at the other end of the hall with wax in his ears and never ever touch me at all.”

“Have you ever known him to go back on his word? In person, not by rumor?”

“No but - what if he  _ does _ ? What do I  _ do _ ?”

“Depends,” said Ensren, gazing up at the pearl moon. “How do you feel about all that?”

“I don’t know,” said Link, and meant it. “I don’t like it when he’s cold and closed off. I thought I was afraid he’d give himself to the demons again, but now I - I hurt when I think about how he must hate me.”

Ensren said nothing, and they both listened to the night birds for a while.

“It was fine the way it was,  _ we _ were fine before he - why did he have to change Ensren? What do I  _ do _ ?”

“What do you  _ want _ to do?”

_“That’s not a bird,”_ said Link as his foggy mind jolted back to the now with a sting of lightning. He dropped his cup. “No-”

Ensren frowned, setting his own tea on the wagon. “What is it-?”

“No-!  _ Stop _ ,” cried Link to the night as the eerie, ominous melody coiled up through his bones. “Gan please-!”

Ensren wrapped strong hands around his shoulders. “What’s happening? What do you hear? What’s he doing - how can I help?”

“ _Rajo_ ,” howled Link, clawing at his ears in the vain hope he could somehow unhear that song. “Oh  _ stop _ \- goddess have mercy - make him stop - you don’t know-”

The world flared blue-white.

He fell down white granite steps, skinning his knee. His blood smeared across polished stone in the holy sanctum, and the vaulting chamber echoed his terror back to him: “-what you’re  _ doing _ .”

Link scrambled upright, tripping over boots too large for his awkward feet. His hands could barely wrap around the massive iron handle of the the temple door. The glaring midday sun seared his face, and his reflection in the meditation pool showed him a weak child clothed in hateful green.

“Goddess bright -  _ no _ !”

The gods said nothing as he pelted down the slate paths, heart pounding. He had to get to the castle. He had to persuade Zelda to give him her flute at once. He kept tripping over his stride that was too short, abject fear stealing what little strength this body owned.

No lightning pricked his skin.

_ The spell can’t outlive the caster. It’s the rules. _


	59. Chapter 59

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 9

Solstice eve dawned fair and mild, as idyllic a summer day as ever was. A slender black boat whose best days lay behind it skimmed up onto the muddy shore at the edge of swamp and true land. The lone red-haired oarsman wearing iron jewelry hopped out to splash through the shallows, heedless of the damage to his fine white trousers and trailing rust-colored sash.

The sober man in plain blue trousers and a white shirt rolled up past his tanned elbows picked his way down the slope from a sheltered little grove near that shore. They unloaded crates and chests one after the other, transferring the entire cargo to the already perilously full farm wagon waiting in the grove.

“The rest of it I can manage myself,” said the redhead, hefting a last red-and gold chest onto the boards under the driving bench. “You go ahead to town. I’ve still to make sure the house is hidden and destroy the boat.”

The farmer grunted. “Lunch first.”

The redhead laughed, clapping him on the shoulder. “You’re too good for this shithole of a world, Ensren. Here, have you ever tasted the wine my people make?”

“Majir isn’t rare. Just expensive,” said Ensren.

“Oh, majir is nothing to this stuff. You see to lunch - think remember where I packed the cups. Hell, let’s open a bottle of bloodlime preserves too. Why not.”

Ensren frowned when the redhead turned his back. They ate and spoke of the weather, and the road ahead, and when Ensren lifted the cup to taste the exotic pale gold spirits, he coughed before he even tasted it. The redhead laughed with him, and savored a modest draught of the same on his tongue.

After they each finished their cups, the redhead helped secure rope and sailcloth over the laden wagon, and sent the other off with a kinsman’s embrace.

The redhead navigated the treacherous swamp and the marsh beyond with the nonchalant ease of long practice, but when he pulled the black boat up on a lumpy island in the marsh, nothing resembling a house stood anywhere in sight. A double arc of soaring curved ribs rose from the button grass and forked sundrop and rambling myrtle, draped in moss and chokevine and blue leatherflower. Firetail finches and blue-throated wrens gossiped among the greenery, and a few lazy heron refused to let the intruder disturb their evening nap as he collected a single bag and two-stone sledge from the shore.

He set off toward a less dignified island, but no house stood upon it either. He tethered the boat on a dead tree, and methodically smashed the poor craft to bits. He cast the splinters in a dozen directions from the scraggly island, and climbed the hill in the lowering twilight.

He ducked through overgrowth, picking his way towards a hidden fissure. Inside the artfully sculpted cave, a dim pink light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. A pure spring bubbled up into a shallow marble pool, surrounded by fluted white columns. A dusty golden bottle, half-full, sat on a flat offering stone at the water’s edge.

The redhead left his bag beside it, and strode directly into the pool. He bent to cup water in his palm to wash his face, and dried off again with the long tail of his white shirt with its border of sky blue. He stood at the center of the pool in silence, hefting the sledge as if testing its balance.

“ _ In the name of the Light which must not perish _ ,” he said to the empty shrine at last, his voice the rumble of distant thunder.

He took a single step, swinging the sledge at one elegant column.

A tiny crack split the fluted ribs.


	60. Chapter 60

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T + 13

The world spun though every color that existed and quite a few that didn’t. Season after season, song after song, Link crashed through the river of time with desperate fury, hunting for the right shore. If the stupid little shrine in the upper pasture hadn’t slipped sideways to span the many times, if he hadn’t been able to recover That Mask, if he hadn’t convinced Zelda to help him, if, if, if.

He fell through the sickly canopy of the lightning-blasted oak in the haunted garden, and caught several branches on the way. He sprawled in a thornflower bush long enough to catch his wind, cursing every god he’d ever heard of, and the Unknowable Ones for good measure. He struggled to his feet, wondering if today - whenever today could be said to mean to him anymore - would be the day he found the absolute limit of this body.

The cellar doors under the burned-out wreckage of the cursed house hung shattered and askew, the spiked blood iron padlock still threaded through the hasp. Drifts of red and gold leaves tumbled down the stair, and when he crammed himself under the charred lintelpost, he found all three masks in their places, the stone bowls heaped with withered apples and old deku nuts.

“ **Goddess bright -** **_finally_ ** ,” he rasped, raising the ocarina to his lips once more.

Termina flew away beneath him in a blaze of autumn glory that gave way to the anemic yellow of ripe hay and the brown stubble of harvested fields. The green-brown of cypress and hanging moss and the mysterious shadows of the labyrinthine southern swamp spiraled up toward him, and he let go of the magic just a few yards above the deck of the ship.

Which wasn’t there.

He crashed through ailing chokevine and desiccated myrtle, tumbling down rusted heaps of wreckage and into the foul, stinking water below. He howled and thrashed and fought his way back above the surface, grasping a frayed and rusted steel cable to haul himself up the treacherous, algae-slick slope of the overgrown hulk.

Link swore when he reached the orb pedestal. Not only was the cradle empty, not a single rusted chest that might guard the missing orb hid anywhere on the sliver of remaining deck. Nor did he find it in the perilous crow’s nest. Or in the mushroom-choked cavern that once served an ancient explorer as his cabin.

No, the perverse bastard sunk the orb in the depths of their old fish pond. Which had tripled in depth. In fact, the whole marsh lay under three or four fathoms of polluted, brackish water. Only a few islands rose above the surface now, none of them recognizable, and many of the cypress that once bordered their horizons had perished and begun to rot.

Once he struck the orb, the timeveil pushed all of that two fathoms or more beyond the edges of the ship. The cucco mobbed him for treats as soon as he climbed down from the aft deck - though they still had plenty of gain scattered in and around their early spring salad garden. They were all fat and glossy with health, and only one late morning’s worth of eggs lingered in the nest boxes.

The table and benches stood in the midship hold, an empty vase and a tidy stack of clay bowls reigned at the center of the gold houndstooth cloth.

The bed lay neatly made, a sprig of fresh memoryleaf on each fat cushion.

The washroom was clean, the blue towels hung in their proper places, and a pristine cake of soap waited with a bright new knit washcloth on the shelf beside the sluicegate.

The bookshelves in the workroom stood along the back wall now, and the jeweler’s forge had been packed away into a corner.

The empty looms in the weaving room shone with oil, and sunlight gleamed upon the golden reed he’d hammered endless coils of wire to build so many years ago. The shelves for finished cloth no longer overflowed, but displayed only tidy piles of test pieces grouped by color and purpose, alongside tidy pattern folios and spools of warp and baskets of weft.

A fat parcel wrapped in muslin sat on the windowseat, beside a book of fables - and the golden puzzle box.

Link thumbed through the book - no note. Only a ribbon marking the first page of a silly tale about a cucco who tried to hatch a pumpkin.

Under the muslin, Link found fifteen ells of lambswool overshot in the interlocking spiral pattern Gan had been so pleased to refine. Woven in the rich greens of deep forest and open field.

Link gathered the precious cloth to his chest and fought to breathe. He clutched it tight as the magic swept him away to the north, into the foothills, into the quiet, unremarkable province where home waited for him.

He stumbled a little when he dropped in beside the garish shrine. He wanted to lay down on the fragrant earth to sleep. He wanted to tear the mask away and stuff it under the altar and never look at it again. He wanted to take the sword to the shrine and weep for his follies.

He shoved the offering bowl with its ripe apples to one side of the effigy, and the bottle of blue seaglass to the other, and laid the terrible sword on the oak slab, pulling the black altar cloth over it haphazardly. He thought about leaving the green cloth - but somehow he couldn’t set it down. So he set off towards the house, cradling a softness he couldn’t feel in this skin.

Ensren met him on foot rather more than halfway, unhurried, hands thrust in his pockets.

“ **Oh Ensren my brother - is at the at the big house or the small?** ”

Ensren raised his hazel eyes, deep and treacherous as a still forest pond. “I haven’t seen him in four years.”

“ **Impossible - he promised to stay with you - the ship is not aged even another day,** ” said Link. No lightning stirred under his skin. “ **Did he take a house in town? I must go at once-** ”

“He didn’t  _ promise _ anything. He agreed that extending his holiday from his everyday would be a good idea. That’s all.”

“ **No** ,” said Link, clutching the precious green cloth to his aching chest, where no lightning stung.

Ensren stared down a divine warrior, not a single shadow of fear touching him. “He gave me his books,  _ Link _ .”

Link fell to his knees, no lightning trembling his bones. “ **Which books?** ”

“The name Rin mean anything to you?”

“ **Oh** **_no_ ** **,** ” whispered Link, and no lightning sizzled on his tongue. “ **_Those_ ** **books.** ”


	61. Chapter 61

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T - 5  
>  _In the place where the rivers dance like the moon, in the place that holds the bones of the foolish serpent who tried to eat the sun, in the place where the stars burn..._

Winter dug its talons into the bedrock of the land, defying the circuit of the sun. The river wallowed low in its jagged bed, bereft, for the highlands snowmelt which refused to come. Nabooru counseled him against summoning the warrior-ghost in private, but before the Elder Mothers she too agreed it was time Hyrule learned to respect her neighbors.

The Exalted Sun tried to argue when he ordered the fortress gate opened at twilight.

He ignored her, pulling himself into Asifad’s saddle and turning him toward the outer court.  

She could have delegated - but she chose instead to carry on the argument trotting at his stirrup.

"The night is dangerous, my King. We have might enough and magic enough without disturbing the ancestors," she said. Her voice carried, deep and harsh, trained to be heard at distance and over chaos.

"I am more dangerous than anything else you happen to fear, Exalted. We will field more than enough, and let the rocs feast on them this year,” he returned, giving Asifad leave to run. _Although I wouldn’t much mind one pecking you from your rotten perch. Nabooru belongs at my side, not you._

Ravenous moldorm swallowed their trail almost as soon as they laid it, bickering with cursed peahats for right of first blood. Opportunistic rocs drifted in their wake, picking off vermin wounded in the pursuit. He let them, until he wearied of their noise. He lofted one tiny ball of lightning over his shoulder to tempt the moldorm to the surface, and called a ground strike through it a few beats after.

The magic sizzled in the air around him as he guided Asifad up onto the relative safety of the serpent's spine. A single surviving roc banked sharply, winging back towards easier prey among the silverbrush and ironroot of the eastern plateau.

Ganondorf continued north and west, Asifad’s hooves echoing upon the dry riverbed. He could feel the pent-up rage of the brewing flood waters far upland, but it wouldn’t break. _Not yet. One more night. Two at most._

Spiders fled their nests in the ruined grotto, hissing and clicking impotent protest. All but one, malformed and gilded like her horde of trash. She crouched over it, blind to the light that warned off her fellows. She twisted, caressing her treasure with her distorted limbs: cracked amphorae and dusty jars, half-buried by creeping sand and muck driven into the grotto by a dozen quicksilver spring floods. Glittering fragments of cheap green glass and chipped rupees of no use to anyone but her.

“No matter how many times I send you on, your kind returns to the ruin of this childish hoard,” he scolded her.

She muttered at him for intruding on her miserable solitude, grinding her teeth, ready to strike if he gave her half a chance. Which he didn’t.

Ganondorf pushed back the cowl of his mantle, clicking in irritation when it caught on the golden spikes of the War Crown. Again. _Maybe in another few months I will be used to it. Or I will design something better._

He summoned a cheerful little fire to warm the desolate place and keep him company while he waited with his memories and his plans for the spring campaign.

He did not wait long. A wave of familiar nausea rolled through him as blue light flared above the clear pool of water to his left.

Link stumbled through the bright magic, haggard and soaking wet, stinking of rot.

Ganondorf took a step to the side, hand drifting toward the enchanted moonblade hidden in his sash. He’d never seen Link like this, whether he wore the full warrior aspect, or the seeming of a child, or a coltish youth. The miasma of undeath clung to his pale, scarred flesh, and his blue eyes seemed to have sunk into shadows under his troubled brow.

Link said nothing. He advanced in halting steps, holding out his cupped hands, his fingers threaded through loops of delicate iron chains.

“You should know by now it’s not possible to scare me,” rumbled Gan.

“I always stop you,” rasped Link, rattling the chains. “Why couldn’t I stop you?”

Gan frowned. “What happened?”

“I couldn’t stop you,” rasped Link, blue eyes pinned and unfocused. “I always stop you. Why couldn’t I stop you? I couldn’t stop you.”

“Explain your dire little prophecy, spook. You waste my time and try my patience,” said Ganondorf, retreating another step to stay out of his reach.

“It was an accident. I didn’t know. I didn’t mean,” babbled Link.

“What did you do?”

“I tried to fix it. But I couldn’t stop you. I always stop you. A hundred thousand million times - oh _Rajo_ why couldn’t I stop you?”

“You wear a new form. You look - older,” said Gan. “What _happened_ when you danced through the heavens this time?”

“I did a _bad thing_ ,” sobbed Link, holding the iron chains to his lips. “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”

“You lost a battle?”

“I _lost_ the day I sang the morning into stars for you. I knew you would forget, but I didn’t know the river would fork, and _I didn’t know who you were._ ”

Ganondorf nodded, remembering the night he was pulled into the dreams of the gods’ champion. The morning Link vanished in a flare of blue magic, and _he_ walked into the Sands to seize his Name. The morning Link refused to take him to Zelda, but offered to carry letters instead. One to her. One to himself the day before. _So I wouldn’t get in trouble for sneaking out at night. As if that ever actually mattered. Seems strange, the things I thought were important then._

“I didn’t know either yet. I was small. So it took a few days to understand the riddle in the vision you brought,” said Ganondorf. “But you see, _now_ I have conquered the eight Trials, and the prophecy is flowering. We will bring wealth and glory to my People.”

“No, _oh no_ , the shadows lie - war is _bad_ . War is what the demon _wants_ you to do,” sobbed Link. “Don’t listen to the shadows. _I_ did what they said was right, and it was _wrong_.”

“Hn. I’m a War King. I kinda _know_ war is terrible,” said Gan, opening his hands to beckon the warrior ghost closer. “You’re right, he will feast on the death and chaos, but that was inevitable. Hyrule is tightening their borders, setting new and arbitrary laws, building prisons and execution grounds. They must be stopped. It’s a means to an end.”

Link groped for his hand, his touch icy, slimy, heavy with clinging miasma. “Please - I beg you - not again. He will _devour_ you and then I will have to kill you to stop it. _And I can’t!_ I can’t bear it. I always stop you. But you locked me out again so I couldn’t stop you. _Why couldn’t I stop you?_ ”

Ganondorf frowned. “You’re getting tangled in your head. Looping through possible futures - but you are _here_ . You aren’t dancing. You are _now_. The prophecy is still flowering. There is still time to find the tears of the gods and change the course of the stars.”

Link bowed his fair head and sobbed. White dust and bits of grit and slimy vegetation clung to his damp, tangled hair. Gan had never seen him manifest with it so long before. Maybe this was what he looked like when he died to become the Warrior.

“Tell me where it is and your suffering will be over,” murmured Gan, tucking his other hand under Link’s chin and coaxing him to look up. “I _know_ you’ve seen it.”

“I can’t,” moaned Link.

“You _can_ . Hyrule bound you to herself as a guardian - giving me this secret will _protect_ your country,” murmured Gan, brushing his shaggy hair back, surprised to see an open wound hiding beneath, marking him from brow to cheek. Dark circles wreathed his haunted blue eyes, and something had torn his blue-silver earrings from his flesh, leaving the lobes bloody and ragged. “I need it. It’s the only thing stronger than _Him_.”

“It’s stronger than you too,” whimpered Link. “If you touch it, the triforce will shatter, and the worst tomorrows will happen. Again.”

“I am King. I am stronger than the child you remember.”

Link shook his head. “Only a pure and righteous heart can command it whole, and your lust for power is _always_ your undoing. And I - they will tell me do do it again and I can’t. _I can’t_. We were going to go home together - we were so close - but you went into the shadows alone and I couldn’t stop you. Why couldn’t I stop you?”

Ganondorf pulled Link into his arms, holding his broken spirit as he wept for the disasters of a hundred thousand possible destinies. “You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you old friend?”

Link sobbed.

“It will be okay this time. There is another way home, free of gods and demons and terrible destinies. Where everything is good and just and fair, and you can rest at last,” said Gan, bowing to kiss his pale brow.

“I can’t,” he sobbed.

“Shh. I’m here. I can help you. The magic might hurt a little, but I’ll do my best to make it easy. I’m a witch remember? Most powerful sorcerer to ever live,” murmured Gan, weaving a subtle thread of power into his words, leaning his Will gently upon his strange, tortured friend. “I’ll be with you ok? All the way to the end.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. You’re not alone this time. There’s nothing to fear. I will hold you, and we will go home,” said Gan gently, slipping the sacred obsidian moonblade from his sash. No immortal compulsion could subvert the oldest laws for long - and the golden people had guarded the veil between the lands of the living and the dead since the ancient days when the Three gave mortals free will.

“Oh _Jojo_ ,” said Link, reaching up to touch his cheek. The iron chains in his hands stung at first, but within moments his skin went numb. Whatever curse had been forged into them would make a fascinating study later.

“Be brave for me, Link. Just one last time, and everything will be ok,” murmured Gan, Willing him to close his sad blue eyes, to relax his trembling mortal shell - and in one swift arc, Gan slit his throat.

He expected blood.

He did not expect lightning.

The massive ground-strike crashed through the roof of the grotto and blasted him across the little shelter. Pain tried to crush him in its fist, and as he struggled to breathe, to stand, to face his true opponent, he dropped the knife.

“Holy Mother of Sands,” he swore at his reflection wrought in golden light.

“ **By the might of the oldest gods, no blade of heaven nor hell may harm thee,** ” boomed the form of Light.

“I don’t seek to harm,” stammered Gan. “The banishing blade is too sharp for pain.”

His reflection drew a slender sword of pure light, settling into the First Pattern between him and Link’s failing body. “ **No shadow shall harm thee, nor witchcraft charm thee. Nothing ill shall come near thee.** ”

“He desires to lay down his burden - he is no longer willing to fight a divine war,” said Gan to his reflection. “Let me go to him. I promised I would hold him until the end.”

The reflection cocked his sword into Third Pattern. “ **The dreadful burden.** ”

“Yes - exactly so. It is too much for him, but _I_ am strong. I will end the war for good, whatever the cost,” said Gan.

His reflection turned, gesturing at Link with his elegant blade. “ **No work of man nor magic may break it.** ”

Gan frowned, edging around his bright opponent to reach his friend. Tiny lightnings crawled over his pale skin, flaring out at every scrape and cut he’d failed to notice before. “Anything that can be made can be broken. It’s only a matter of leveraging the right tool.”

His reflection said nothing.

Gan knelt beside Link, scooping his frail body into his arms. _Now_ he looked like a wayward youth, his eyes fluttering, lines smoothing away from his pale face. His golden hair threw off the clinging muck and - _grew shorter?_ “I’m here, Link. We’re together now, and everything will be ok. We’re going home.”

Link’s lips moved, and blood bubbled from his throat with a whistling sigh of failing wind.

“That’s right. Home,” said Gan, cradling him close as his body grew strangely light, and his dark clothes bleached out to gray, then white.

Lightning crackled around them both, arcing between blood and topaz, flesh and earth. Link’s lips moved in a new shape, but Gan couldn’t tell what he was trying to say, and he couldn’t pull the thought from his mind by magic either.

“ _What have you done,_ ” demanded Nabooru.

 _Huh. She hasn’t been able to sneak up on me in eight years._ “You’re becoming a formidable thief, sister.”

Steel scraped against leather as she clicked her swords free of the rain guard. “Answer me Ganondorf Rajenaya Chalut Dragmire.”

“Hn,” said Gan, frowning over Link’s frail little body. He always seemed smallish in mortal form, but it curdled his stomach to see blood pouring from a body so young. “You ask your brother or your King?”

“I will never serve a king who slays _children_ ,” snarled Nabooru.

“Then you surrender the right to question the decisions I make to protect our people,” said Gan, glancing over his shoulder. _Good. She came alone. One less thing to worry about._

“A Hylian child is still a _child_ ,” she snapped.

“And _you_ beat him within an inch of his life eight years ago,” said Gan. “As is correct when dealing with a spy and assassin sent by our enemies. Whatever his apparent age.”

Nabooru tore the mantle of First Roc from her shoulders, casting it into the dust between them. “Then I should have let him kill you before the Rova turned you into _this_ . I will _never_ serve an evil king. The beloved of my mother never gave me a _brother_.”

Ganondorf watched her turn heel and leave, blood soaking through his dark arming suit as he tried vainly to give peace to a dying child dressed in the green of the forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor timeline note in comments below.


End file.
